


The Cage, It Called

by sandwichtree



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:30:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandwichtree/pseuds/sandwichtree
Summary: Thomas Poindexter gets out of prison, Will develops a protective streak a mile wide, and Nursey smiles.





	The Cage, It Called

**Author's Note:**

> GENERAL HOMOPHOBIA CONTENT WARNING-- more detailed, spoilery content warnings in the end notes. CTRL+F or COMMAND+F search 'Full Content Warnings' if you'd like to read them before reading this fic.
> 
> ALSO, HEY, if you're reading for a second time, I finally went back and actually edited this beast of a fic, so some wording is a little different. Please, do not get disoriented by things subtly changing around you without explantation.

 

 

When Will was sixteen he tried to tell Thomas he was gay.

Thomas beat the shit out of him.

Neither of them fessed up about _why_ Will had ended up in the hospital, no matter how hard their mother begged them to tell, just that Thomas was the one who did it.

Will had two black eyes, a broken nose, purple and yellow forearms from trying to block the blows. Thomas brought down a hellstorm. Thomas screamed, "Don't you _ever_ fucking say that!" and fractured one of Will's ribs under his boot.

Thomas also got Will his first girlfriend, and covered for him every time he stayed out past curfew. Once, when they were kids, Will was nearly pulled into a riptide at the beach, and Thomas dragged him back to shore to give him some TV-taught approximation of CPR. He stole Will candy from the gas station. They have pictures of Thomas at 6 years old, lugging Will in his baby onesies between elaborate pretend conflicts.

"He used to hit the backs of my legs when I took too long to get you a bottle," Will's mom says, years later. "Because he couldn't stand to hear you cry. I wish you would talk to him."

Will scoffs. "He'll survive."

His mom twists her pale hands in her lap. "He gets out next month, you know. You could pick him up with me. I _know_ he would appreciate it. It's been years since you two..."

Will stands abruptly as his bus pulls up to the station. "If Thomas wanted me to give a shit about him, maybe he should've-- learned to control himself."

Of course, if Thomas knew how to control himself he wouldn't _be_ in prison, let alone finishing his second stint since he turned 18 four years ago.

"Alright, sweetheart," Will's mom sighs. "I don't want you to leave angry." She stands too, then, and pulls him into a hug.

Will takes a moment to breathe in her lavender bread dough smell.

"This is a happy day," she says in a different, slightly forced tone. "Your first college tour, Will!"

 

* * *

 

Derek Nurse introduces himself, first thing, when they both line up by the short chick calling for prospective hockey recruits.

"'Nursey' to my high school hockey team. Dunno if it'll stick here."

As he tells Nursey his own name and position, Will vaguely realizes that he's never seen a guy this attractive in real life before. And not only is he hot, with the shoulders and the _eyes_ and the jaw, he's clearly loaded, too. His wristwatch looks like it cost more than Will's entire wardrobe.

"Defense?" Nursey says, in this stupidly rich, smooth voice. "That's dope. Me too."

"Dope," Will echoes. "Did I get off the bus in 1980?"

Nursey adjusts his green snapback with a relaxed half smile that makes Will break out in goosebumps. He's just chilled the fuck out, on a tour at a private university Will would die to get a scholarship for.

"Don't be like that, my fellow D-man," Nursey says, but at odds with his words, his tone stays warm, and he touches two knuckles briefly to the inside of Will's flannel-clad elbow.

And--

Something hot pulses through Will's whole body, and he feels suddenly, visibly out of place, raw, good as dead, like a wounded animal in a bayou.

Nursey grins at Will's scowl, and says, "Don't be scared either, dude. College is just the middle man of capitalist life. No big."

What the actual fuck.

Will does not take Nursey's advice not to be scared. In fact, he inwardly panics through group introductions, through the campus tour, through meeting the current team, all the way back to the Haus, where they are invited to stay for a party.

Nursey fits in without even trying, of course. He knows one of the first line hockey players from high school, he's read classic literature, and he keeps quoting movies Will's never heard of. Will catches himself thinking that Nursey is out of his league, like that's even a consideration, like it's relevant, and then he seriously considers tearing his own heart out just to, like, relieve some tension.

Chowder, the only other high schooler whose name Will managed to absorb mid-freak out, crows in excitement as they step over the threshold of the very decrepit, very smelly college house. "Let's get _schwasted!"_

"Wow," Nursey comments.

Will falls on the booze like a dying man at the fountain of youth. He's chugged an entire beer before he even manages to look up and check the whereabouts of the other tourees.

Turns out they're holding their own drinks, watching him, Nursey in amusement, Chowder in awe.

"You said you wanted to get wasted, man!" Will says to Chowder.

He tries not to get caught watching Nursey's mouth on the lip of his beer bottle but no such luck.

Nursey doesn't say anything, at least, just raises his eyebrows, and the heavy fog of alcohol settling in his head lets Will roll his eyes in reply.

They all fuck around watching beer pong for awhile before Will feels a light tap on his shoulder and turns to see Eric Bittle, the gift bag not-manager guy, standing there with a navy blue bowtie and a grin.

"Y'all enjoying the party?" he asks.

Chowder pumps his fist unironically. "Hi, Bitty! This place is totally the _best!_ I'm so excited for next year already! Is it okay for me to call you Bitty?"

Bitty's huge brown eyes legitimately sparkle at that, and he laughs out, "Of course! I'm excited for you to be part of the team too! Hope you're doing your part to finish convincing your friends." He winks.

"Like he needs to," Nursey says, holding out his hand for a high five, which Bitty happily delivers. "Those little pies were outrageous, bro. I'm telling you guys--" He refers to Chowder and Will and then grins at Bitty, sly. "--this is one _lucky_ team."

Bitty turns pink, his laugh going high pitched. "Lucky we don't all get kicked off the team for uncontrolled weight gain, maybe."

Will's heart pounds. He had this guy pegged as gay within a minute of laying eyes on him, 10 kinds of _Will and Grace_ hip-cock hand-dangle in one pair of dainty size-8 hockey skates. Will's never seen a dude wear a button-up shirt or tight, pressed dress shorts to a frat party before. It's like, sure, Samwell has this liberal reputation, but last time Will checked it's still located in the real world, and it's like Bitty's not even _trying_ to hide it.

And the way he blushes at Nursey... Definitely not hiding it, then.

Not that Nursey is helping matters, looking like a model, smelling faintly sweet, grabbing them all drinks as the conversation transitions into hometown talk.

"Yes, boys. I know you must have guessed the moment I walked into Faber, and I'll admit it," Bitty declares, reaching out to receive his beer. "I was raised by a football coach... Hey!" 

Nursey holds Bitty's drink out of his reach with a smirk, and then, to much laughter and applause, he fumbles it and spills beer all over the carpet when he finally tries to fork it over.

They follow up Bitty's funny, slightly self-depricating tirade on Georgia with Nursey's ironic disdain for Andover, and Chowder's blatant, beautiful, untarnished enthusiasm about California. Then it's Will's turn.

"Just. I'm from Maine," he says.

Nursey elbows him. "What, no charming anecdote?"

"Uh, that actress chick from Dog Cops went to my high school, I guess."

"That's better," Nursey sighs, hanging an arm around Will's neck. "Now I'm _thoroughly_ charmed."

It's only thanks to the alcohol coursing through Will's system that his whole body doesn't lock up like a tetanus patient. He downs two more beers to keep it up, and Nursey matches him.

Time passes in fits and starts of laughter and yelling and music, until everything eventually narrows down to the insistent fact that Will has to pee.

Nursey follows him stumblingly upstairs to the bathroom, and calls, "I'm next!" after him.

However.

When Will emerges a minute later with a blessedly empty bladder, Nursey pushes him back into the bathroom and says, kind of loud, "So I don't actually have to piss," as he pulls the door shut behind them.

Will goes, "What are you--"

Nursey grabs him by the waist and leans them against the sink with his hips.

The overhead light is still off, but a little orange nightlight plugged in under the medicine cabinet shines off all the edges of Nursey's large, rugged features.

At first he looks as scared as Will feels, and there's this strange suspended moment. Will's head is all floaty from the beer, hearing people laughing downstairs, everything tinged gold. They stare at each other with wide eyes, barely breathing.

Then, for some reason, Nursey grins.

It would be easy.

Will doesn't even have to go here.

Nursey leans in, big hands tightening over Will's rib cage.

Will could have this and then fuck off into the closet for the rest of his life.

As he watches Nursey's black eyelashes blink down to meet his cheeks, seemingly in slow motion, Will thinks he's going to let it happen. He wants it to happen so bad, but in the end some vital chemical reaction inside him goes haywire.

It's something to do with that smile. Something Nursey saw that no one else ever has.

Will shoves him back into the opposite bathroom wall, and shouts, "Get the _fuck_ off of me!"

 

* * *

 

He still ends up choosing Samwell.

So does Derek Nurse.

In a turn of events surprising no one, they don't get along.

 

* * *

 

Shitty makes jokes about the frogs imprinting on Bitty, but Will almost wonders if that's what actually happened to him.

He wants to walk Bitty to classes. He wants to fix his oven. He wants to watch him _sleep._

Because here's the thing: During his first day of school, Will gets three missed calls from Thomas.

After each one he feels sick and paranoid, like he's going to look over his shoulder and Thomas will _be there_ asking why Will chose this prissy school, why he can't meet the eyes of his defense partner, why someone doesn't teach that fairy winger a lesson, prancing around in those short shorts, _flaunting it._ That's the thing Will knows above everything else: if Thomas knew about Bitty, something awful would happen.

This, weirdly, just makes Will want to hang out with Bitty more. He wants to be around him all the time, just in case, because there are men out there like Thomas, and Bitty's scared of getting checked during _hockey._ Will doesn't tell him this, obviously, just loiters around the kitchen at all times he doesn't have class, jogs over to walk with Bitty whenever he sees him on campus, tries to act casual.

Of course, casual has never been Will's thing. Obsessive is more his speed.

Two weeks into hockey practice, when he's squinting out at Bitty and Jack on the ice and trying to figure out if Jack Zimmerman is prejudiced or just weird, this becomes abudantly clear.

"You got the hots for Bitty, huh?" says Nursey, of all people. 

The way Nursey does casual is practically art. Will glances out of the corner of his eye, wondering if this is some follow-up pass from Tadpole Tour, but Nursey just raises his eyebrows behind his visor and smiles a little, unconcerned, like this isn't practically the first thing he's said to Will since Will shoved him into that bathroom wall.

Will wonders, caught in the curious gaze, just what it was Nursey saw on his face that night.

Then he realizes what Nursey actually said and gapes. "What the fuck, _no!_ "

"That so," Nursey replies with the same stoned smile.

"Stop," Will snaps.

Nursey's face only grows more delighted as they both hear Chowder loudly whisper, _"They're speaking!"_

"Look, why are you even asking me that?" Will half shouts. Then, before Nursey can answer, practically unrelated, "Are you on _drugs?"_

Nursey laughs. "Why? You want some, Dex?"

"I can't believe you. _"_

"Hm," says Nursey. "Have you ever considered that maybe your attitudes about mind altering substances are based more on government propoganda than actual scientifically proven health risks?"

"This from the asshole who is high at practice! I'd be off the team in a split second if I tried that shit."

Nursey's temper rises to fit the atmosphere. "You really want to get into all the ways me doing drugs is more dangerous than _you_ doing drugs? Wow." He gets real pissed off, dumb charming smile nowhere to be seen, which Will hasn't seen him do with anyone else.

It feels good, like the reason for the ill will between them is simply that they don't get along, instead of a sordid sexual rejection in a frat house bathroom. Or like, maybe the reason for that rejection wasn't that Nursey is into men while Will is a huge asshole, just that Nursey says tomayto and Will says tomahto.

 

* * *

 

It's fine. It's normal.

Will spends a few peaceful days basking in the new order of things.

He screens calls from his brother, low-key stalks Eric Bittle, and occasionally fights with Nursey, who seems to spend all his time lying on nearby piles of orange leaves, commenting on, "--this whole pathetic crush situation, bro."

Even that almost feels good, though, for all it embarrasses him, like he's out to Nursey without actually ever needing to admit to anything.

If it's supposed to be revenge--this thing where Nursey sticks close and tries in his I'm-literally-not-trying-anything-ever kind of way to piss Will off--it isn't working. It _does_ piss him off, but, for some reason, it also fits into his life seamlessly, like Nursey was meant to be there all along.

"You don't even have class on this side of campus," Nursey adds. "At this rate, even Chowder is gonna notice."

Keeping his eyes trained on the Science Building from which Bitty is scheduled to emerge within five minutes, Will hisses, "Shut up, Nursey. Quit following me around."

He can hear a dry rustle as Nursey lies back in his leaf pile. "I was literally here before you, dude. Maybe _you're_ following _me_."

Will pretends with enormous commitment that his face isn't beat red and doesn't dignify that with a response. And when he catches sight of Bitty emerging from the swinging glass doors, he hops off his bench and hurries away without bothering to say goodbye.

"Bitty! Hey!" he calls.

Bitty turns, and it's like the sun coming out. All his reddish gold hair catches the low angle of the afternoon sunlight and his eyes crinkle a little as he grins.

"Hiya, Dex," he says cheerily.

Will looks down the trail of buttons on Bitty's shirt to the slim cradle of his hips in skinny corduroys.

Once when Will was a kid, he saw a lesbian TV host get interviewed on 60 Minutes, and she jokingly mentioned that the thing she found most attractive in a woman was obvious gayness. At the time Will both didn't know _he_ wasn't straight, and he didn't get it. He thought of it like--if lesbians liked women, shouldn't they like the most _womanly_ ones? The idea of two women acting and dressing masculine and then falling in love with each other like that seemed...illicit. Fundamentally unrelatable. Of course, his views on falling in love with women have always been clinical. Maybe his ability to understand the concept was impeded from the start.

The point is, he knows he's dealing on stereotypes--ones that he should know from personal experience don't necessarily apply--but nowadays, he gets it.

He doesn't think he'd ever actually held a conversation with another guy who he _knows_ likes men until Frog Tour--Bitty in his bowties and Bauers, Nursey in the dim orange bathroom light, potential energy like a bowling ball hanging from a vacuum cleaner nozzle.

Will really gets it.

Bitty fusses with the unzipped sides of his hoodie, bunched up by his backpack straps, as they walk. "Aw, I'm always so happy to see y'all walking around campus. Almost like real college students," he teases, grinning.

"Man, did anyone talk to _you_ like that when you were a frog?" Will asks, reaching over to tug Bitty's sweater out of disarray.

Bitty turns up his nose. "As far as you know, William Poindexter, I was never a frog."

"Right."

"Oh! _Chowder!"_

A second later, Chowder grabs him in a hug from nowhere.

Chris Chowder Chow is loved by everyone, and Will keeps waiting to feel jealous of him the way he feels jealous of Nursey, but it never happens, so he lets himself love Chowder, too. Chowder, of course, is easy to love, is so completely the opposite of everything Will worries about that it's simple.

"You guys!" he says. He hugs Bitty next. He's bright red, grinning with all his braces. "I just met the _coolest_ professor! Oh my god! I need to tell you all about her. Where's Nursey?"

"Where _is_ Nursey?" Bitty asks Will, as if Will is supposed to know.

"I'll call him!" Chowder says. "You guys wanna go to Betty's?"

Will feels his mouth twist, imagining Nursey receiving this call from the ground with his shiny watch and his soft flannel, right where Will left him.

Nursey, of course, loves Chowder as well.

"Don't," Will says, after Chowder has already dialed the number. "You know I can't stand that guy..."

Bitty pats him on the shoulder. "Give it time, Dex, okay?"

 

* * *

 

Chowder becomes progressively more anxious about the fighting--even convincing Bitty to intercede at one point--and as much as Will wishes he wouldn't, he can't imagine it would soothe Chowder to know that this constant, obtrusive conflict is better than the alternative. He tries to tell Chowder it's no big deal. Then Nursey does. They even try together, but Nursey decides to use the world 'chill,' so it devolves into a fight.

"See? See?! This is what I'm _talking about!"_ Chowder exclaims, his voice straying into a whine.

Nursey gives Will a dark look, like it's _his_ fault, which just about raises Will's hackles enough to keep arguing despite Chowder's sad but-why-would-you-kick-my-puppy face, which is saying a lot.

"Stop!" Chowder shouts, stepping between them in a hurry. "Don't look at each other! You have fight eyes. I _hate_ this."

Will runs his hands through his hair and turns his entire body away from Nursey so he isn't tempted.

Behind him, Nursey drops the aggression and goes, _"Aw,_ Clam Chowder..." all teasing and unrepentant. "Does it disturb your fragile goalie equilibrium? Because I will personally weave you a security blanket out of goal nets, man. Don't even worry about it."

Chowder makes a pathetic noise, and Will sneaks a peek over his shoulder.

Nursey's got his arm around Chowder, smiling at him at close range, faces dipped together.

Will thinks viciously, still tugging at his hair and trying to repress his rage, that Chowder might think twice about letting Nursey do shit like that if he knew what Nursey tried to do in the bathroom.

"What do you think, Dex?" Nursey says, in the same deep smooth voice he just used five minutes ago to call Will 'the epitome of angry white boy college culture.' "Can we get along long enough to rock this guy to sleep before games?"

"Ugh," says Will.

Chowder's mouth does that downturned boomerang thing.

Will tries to breathe.

Nursey's really asking if they're allowed to lay off each other a bit, or if that's going to fuck everything up, and Will doesn't _know_ , but he forces out, "Of course. For Chowder, who's very cool, I would tolerate your presence for any number of lullabies." Just saying it and knowing it's true leeches some of the anger out of him.

Nursey snorts and Chowder laughs tremulously.

"See?" Nursey says. "We're all good, Chow Man."

"You _guys_..." Chowder mumbles around a smile, but he still sounds shaken up and a little miserable.

Nursey's trying to catch Will's eye, probably to do that same fond 'This guy, am I right?' look that people are always exchanging around Chowder, but Will looks determinedly away. It's hard enough to deal as it is, barely tolerating one another. If he and Nursey start sliding down some slippery slope toward actual friendship then there's no excuse for any of it.

 

* * *

 

Will's mom has six brothers.

She's got scars from BB gun pellets and arms that lift the hoods of cars as easily as the lids on sauce pans. Will has never seen her wear anything other than a freshly ironed dress in his life, and she loses hours of sleep curling her coarse red hair every morning, but she walks like a soldier, steady and stomping. She laughs when she talks about it, like she tried and never succeeded, to keep her thighs together.

Will used to carry himself that way, a little, when he was younger, but eventually Thomas taught him not to walk like a bitch.

Sometimes Will tries to remember why he thought he could tell Thomas the truth.

Again and again, he comes back to Thomas's face bent over his at the beach when they were kids, close and terrified, darkened by the midday sun behind his head. That moment is stuck somewhere in Will. He can't forget the sound of Thomas begging for his brother's lungs to work. One of their uncles eventually found them there and carried Will back to his mother, but he can't remember which uncle it was.

Of Mom's six brothers, four went to Afghanistan. Three of those went to Iraq afterward. They're a big Irish family on the East coast, so three of them are cops, two of which reside in the Venn Diagram overlap with the veterans. One mechanic, one used appliance salesman, and then Uncles Pat and Don, who work the lobster boat together down in Coastview.

On every Sunday morning since Will can remember, the Poindexters have sat together at Saint Mary's, a variegated mass of orange heads with the odd brunette or blond wife between.

And since their dad wasn't around, each of Thomas and Will's uncles tried to take them under his wing in his own awkward, gruff way. Will learned to shoot a gun, how to replace a car battery, how to haul up a lobster pot, how to research all the reasons Uncle Matthew's views about immigration are wrong, and all the reasons not to bring it up during Thanksgiving dinner.

He tries to keep all these hobbies and skills up to snuff at Samwell but finds himself running short on time. Between balancing school, hockey, Bitty, Nursey, Chowder, Samwell Republicans, and fixing the Haus's oven every other day, he forgets himself. He gets short-tempered, which means he starts getting bold.

One day--after hours of doing battle with Betsy the Oven and enduring Nursey's inane comments about the inevitability of entropy--Will even, in a fit of insanity, answers a call from Thomas.

At first there's silence, and then Thomas goes, " _Uh, hello?_ " His voice is just as raspy and stereotypical New England as always, like a bully from a kid's movie.

Will regrets his decision immediately.

"I have nothing to say to you," he rasps. "Stop calling."

He can hear Thomas say, " _Hey. Will--_ " tinny through the speaker as he pulls it away from his ear and hangs up. With shaking hands, he turns off the phone altogether, but he still doesn't block Thomas's number.

Nursey drops himself onto the kitchen floor beside him. "Ex-girlfriend?"

Will shakes his head, unable to speak.

"Ex- _Bitty?"_ Nursey asks, looking over at an odd angle with his head leaning back against the refrigerator. "Ex-I-stalked-you-every-day-for-a-semester? Should have known you had a scandalous past, Dex. All that self-righteous tension."

Will helplessly watches his own gaze flick to Nursey's Adam's apple and all the way down his throat to the white collar of his v-neck. He coughs and mutters, "You're literally such an asshole, dude."

Nursey raises an eyebrow and takes a breath to reply, but then behind them, Bitty goes, "I'm off to Murder Stop-n-Shop, boys! Anyone need anything while I'm out?"

Will is off the floor with his coat donned before he even knows what he's doing.

Nursey comes along too, and makes so many snippy little comments that Bitty makes them both wait outside while he shops, and, for all Will knows, gets heinously murdered within the sketchy-ass excuse for a business establishment.

It's not _Will's_ fault Nursey doesn't know when to quit.

He scuffs his sneaker against the cold cement, glaring over at Nursey who is glaring back at him, and it feels like equilibrium. It doesn't last long.

 

* * *

 

During Samwell's game against Dartmouth, Will and Nursey get put in for their first shift during the second period when first and second lines start to show signs of fatigue up against Karl Bierman, the battering ram of a center that Dartmouth has been relying on all season.

They're barely out for five seconds before Bierman slices the puck between them and then past Chowder with no interference but the scrape of the ice.

The crowd groans.

"What the _fuck_ ," Nursey mutters, checking Will gently.

"What the fuck yourself, dipshit," Will snaps back.

Bierman chirps, "Better luck next time, queer," as he skates past, with a light punch of his glove to Nursey's shoulder pads.

Nursey freezes, his other arm still pressed against Will's.

Will sees red.

Red.

Red.

Red.

As Jack and Ollie peel him off of Bierman, whose face is fierce, terrified and spurting blood, Will wonders if this is how Thomas feels, outside of himself, like his fists are flying through all the world's endless bullshit and punching in toward divinity, like the momentum and impact of muscles and bones are the only things that keep shadows from encroaching on the Earth. It's vexing and religious simultaneously. It's necessary. Enlightening. Under his helmet, Bierman has hair the same orange shade as Thomas's, and it makes Will crazy. He snarls and lunges forward again, even as he catches the sound of Jack's voice, thunderous, yelling, "Pull it together, Poindexter!"

Eventually he finds himself dumped on the bench between Nursey, who doesn't look at him, and Bitty, who stares.

He concentrates on breathing, which seems harder, suddenly, without any more noses to break. He wants to break his _own_ nose. He was so worried about Bitty, who is already always surrounded by Jack and Shitty and Ransom and Holster, any of whom would go to the fucking mat for him at the drop of a hat, he forgot to worry about Nursey, too. Who does Nursey have to protect him? He's only friends with frail theater geeks and chicks with septum rings. All this time Will was so scared Nursey would hurt him that he forgot that Nursey could get hurt.

The buzzer sounds, screeching and echoing across the ice and off the ceiling. Samwell loses the game, 0-4.

Will feels himself swimming back toward executive function.

In the locker room, Ransom and Holster pester him with glee, assuming he lost his shit over Bierman because Bierman was giving all the D-men a run for their money.

"D-men defend each other to the d-end, broski," Ransom whimpers, wiping fake tears. "This is so beautiful. We're all, like, a d-family now."

Holster puts his arms tenderly around both of them. "This is a d-light. We knew we could d-pend on you, Dexy."

They're both super hot and touching him all over, but Will doesn't feel jack shit.

Jack and the coaches summon him to the office for a lecture he doesn't really hear, and after Will somehow manages to convince them that it won't happen again, he finds Nursey waiting for him outside.

"That was legendary-level stupid," Nursey says. "This isn't the NHL."

Will nods, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I really don't want to talk about it."

"Fine, whatever," Nursey says with a widening smile, his face all gilded and warm in the light of the street lamps. "But, dude--and don't Hulk out on me for saying this--you seriously need to chill."

 

* * *

 

Will does _not_ Hulk out. He probably does whatever the opposite of Hulking out is. He Hulks in or something.

"What the _hell_ ," Nursey says, laughing, when he spots Will waiting outside his biology general. "This is the third time today. Are you even going to your classes?"

Will scoffs. "Like I can afford to skip class just to hang out with _you._ "

"You realize that's exactly what it looks like you're doing, right?"

Will ignores this, falling into step beside Nursey as he walks in the direction of his dorm. He hasn't skipped any classes, although he did leave PoliSci a few minutes early. "Chowder and Bitty baked me 'don't ever scare us like that again' pie," he says, trying for casual, hefting the tupperware containing said pie. "Your roommate around? You can share with me, but he's not getting any. He called me a shitbag that one time."

"He only called you that because I paid him money," Nursey reminds him. He's still smiling, but his eyes have gone all thoughtful. "Because you _are_ a shitbag."

"Fuck off."

Nursey laughs. " _You_ fuck off."

They both go quiet for a while and then as they approach the dorm Nursey adds, voice a little weird, "Uh, you know, Bitty has class at Madison Hall right now."

"Well. Pie," Will says. "So."

"Pie," Nursey repeats.

Will doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. "Let's just go in."

"Riiight," Nursey replies, as he beeps open his dorm building's outer door. "Okay. Fine. It's whatever, I guess. Yo, man, Dex. I hope you know you've got major crazy face. Are you, like, laughing silently or about to freak out?"

Both, maybe.

"Neither," says Will.

Then he takes a couple rushing steps to catch Nursey by the arm and stop him in the door to the dorm's dimly-lit stairwell. When Nursey's bicep goes hard under Will's hand, Will wrenches it away.

"Look, Nurse. I've been thinking."

Nursey rolls his eyes briefly, but his face settles into its default partial smirk easily enough. "Yeah, man?"

"Chowder wants us to be friends."

A laugh bursts out of Nursey. "And since when do we give a shit about that?"

That 'we' makes Will's skin crawl. "Since--uh. Yesterday."

"Yesterday. Yesterday, when you completely lost your mind and tried to send Karl Bierman to the hospital."

"Yes. Yeah." Will looks down at the tupperware of pie in his hands. "I just realized, uh. That. Nobody has any reason to think I'm not like that too."

"I think breaking his nose was a pretty clear indication you didn't approve, Dex," Nursey says quietly.

"Anyway, I thought maybe Chowder was right about us, like, putting in some effort."

Nursey squints at him and clearly struggles with responding to that statement, which flies in direct opposition to every single rule they've laid down since Nursey's back hit the bathroom wall.

Will shuffles his feet and looks away to avoid scrutiny, but Nursey stays there, silent and still at the bottom of the stairs for a long time, just staring with those same huge, moss green eyes, trying like hell to find _something_ on Will's face.

"We don't have to, like, _get along_ to be friends," Will adds desperately.

Nursey stays silent for another moment before he lets out a long sigh. Deflates. When Will sneaks a peek at him, he's looking heavenward, posture going lax under his shirt. He says, "We've never even exchanged cell numbers, dude."

Will digs his shitty old Google phone out from the nethers of his backpack. "Whatever, so we'll do it now."

"Chowder's gonna be so psyched about this," Nursey says, tapping rapidly at his iPhone. He smirks faintly when he hands it over, probably because he's already entered 'Dex' as the first name and 'Who Is Proving He's Not A Homophobe' in the last name field.

"You really can't turn it off for two fucking seconds..." Will mutters, deleting the last name and adding his number.

Nursey snickers and gives Will's phone back to him, his contact added under 'Derek "❄" Nurse.' "So," he says, "I guess this is the part where I say this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, huh?"

Will, who has, during this torturous exchange, turned pink from forehead to collarbone, starts up the stairs and says, "Shut up, Nursey. Are we gonna eat pie or not?"

Nursey snorts. "Uh-huh. We'll toast to not getting along."

Fittingly, when they get to Nursey's room, his roommate exclaims, "Hey! Shitbag is back!" and Will only curbs his desire to pie Nursey in the face by the margin of a hair.

 

* * *

 

Soon afterward, Will gets asked out for coffee after a Samwell Republicans meeting.

The girl's name is Kelly and she's beautiful, too beautiful to be a girl he could hypothetically get, actually. Kelly grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin, getting drunk in corn feed dispensers, snowmobiling across frozen lakes, and believing in self-sufficiency above all else.

During meetings, she says things like, "I just don't understand why conservatives get demonized for not wanting to pamper people for every little thing. You can't protect everyone all the time. Eventually people have to stand on their own two feet. That's what my grandfather did. And my dad. And that's what I'm going to do too."

Will always nods along with the rest, but he can hear Nursey saying things like 'generational wealth' and 'bootstraps mythology' and 'racial capital' in his head. Right now he doesn't agree with either of them. He doesn't know what he thinks; mostly he just feels like his head is so full of tangles the wide world's issues bounce off.

But his mom suggested he join the club to meet people, and it feels safe. Plus, the meetings are held in the bowels of the library basement where his phone doesn't get reception. Thomas doesn't call as often anymore, usually only once or twice a week, but it hasn't gotten any easier to see his name on the lockscreen.

On the day Kelly asks him out, just as they emerge from the front of the library and all the missed messages and Snaps start pinging his phone, Thomas hasn't called at all. Will has gotten 4 texts from Nursey, however.

"...and so I was wondering if maybe you'd want to get coffee sometime," Kelly finishes, smiling.

Will looks up from his phone and says, "Uh."

He should say yes. She's _really_ pretty, and she wears one of those creepy virgin promise rings from her dad. He hasn't had a girlfriend since sophomore year of high school.

He should really say yes.

He says, "Uh, I'm actually really busy right now."

Her smile goes thin. "Oh."

"You know. Hockey. Midterms..." Nursey MWF. Bitty TTh. Weekends TBD on a case by case basis.

"Yeah, I get it," Kelly laughs.

Will looks at his cell again; the last text Nursey sent says, _right? haaaahahahahaha_.

"Yeah."

Kelly laughs again, or maybe it's more of a scoff. "Uh-huh. Bye, Will."

Will waves goodbye to her as he unlocks his phone and reads the full set of new texts from Nursey.

_poetry slam tonight @ gallagher. you in, brah?_

_come, have fun, chill, wear your dexiest outfit_

_you can probably figure out at least one of those_

_right? haaaahahahahaha_

Will groans out loud at this, and then flushes when he sees Kelly turn around down the sidewalk. He sheepishly waves goodbye to her again, and, scowling, types to Nursey, _im in asshole. meet @ haus?_

It is Wednesday, after all, and that's a designated Nursey day, so he starts walking toward the Haus without waiting for a reply.

The reply he eventually gets is, _whose asshole are you in lol_

 

* * *

 

The campus coffee shop at Gallagher Hall is dim except for the stage, where a stool and a microphone are lit up with spotlights. A discoball rotates lazily from the center of the ceiling, sending little silver circles roving across rickety tables, couches, and 'SLAMWELL!' signs. It smells strongly of cigarettes and weed, sweet and acrid.

Will and Nursey sit near the back on a dusty green velvet davenport with a tall back, elbowing and needling each other more quietly than usual in deference to the hazy atmosphere. Nursey, his face lit up by moving constellations, keeps snickering and whispering things like, "I literally can't believe you actually came."

A short girl dressed in an oversized sweater and thigh-high socks plops down onto the couch on Nursey's other side.

Will wonders abstractly if she has any shorts on under there, but otherwise ignores her presence.

Nursey, of course, starts chatting her up. She's exactly the kind of alternative artist girl Nursey always befriends, with really short bangs and a serious set to her thick eyebrows. At least, she looks serious until Nursey smacks the back of his hand against Will's chest and announces, "This is my friend, Dex, by the way. He hates poetry and only came here because he loves me so much," and she bursts out laughing, holding out a hand for Will to shake.

"Please shut up, Nursey," Will sighs, and shakes her hand.

"I'm Chandra," she says, grinning in the dark. "I have mixed feelings about poetry, but my friend is performing tonight, so I guess we're in the same boat."

Nursey makes a noise of protest but he's still smiling. _"Mixed feelings?"_ he says. "I'm the only sane person here. Millenials are a lost cause."

"It's so subjective, is all," Chandra explains. "In longer literature, the context is provided for you, but with poetry, the context is just your _life,_ you know? So depending on where you're coming from, the same poem could be cheesy garbage or world-altering wisdom."

Will is so out of his depth. "But _a lot_ of it is cheesy garbage, right?"

"Dex unironically listens to Rascall Flatts," Nursey says instantly.

Chandra lets out a loud laugh just as everyone else quiets down to listen to the Slam MC, and then she and Nursey have to spend a few moments muffling their laughter and shushing each other.

Will suddenly realizes that Nursey is flirting with her. He hadn't even considered the option that maybe Nursey dates women in public, that maybe all those platonic rocker chicks aren't quite as platonic as he thought.

Chandra whispers, "You suck, man. You _owe_ me for that."

Will bites his tongue and tries to focus on the poetry. Like he predicted, a lot of it is cheesy garbage, but that's the deepest darkest poetic confessions of 18- to 22-year-olds for you. Like ten people talk about gay stuff--or as they'd probably put it, LGBT issues--in rhyming, halting, lilting tones. Some are sad and some are aggressive, but Will doesn't feel like he relates much to any of it.

Other people in the crowd obviously do, though, if the cheers and whistles are anything to go by.

Nursey doesn't get hyped up like the rest, but sometimes when someone says something he particularly likes, he makes this low, pleased noise in the back of his throat.

Chandra's friend goes last, and he's actually pretty good. He wears a literal black turtleneck and beret, and his poem is 90% jokes about the stereotypical nature of his passions in life, comparing himself to Alan Ginsberg and Walt Whitman and then seguing into a blackly comedic rant about what terrible people they really were.

Will and Nursey both laugh a lot at his performance, making amused eye contact a couple times, like they're actual friends and not...whatever it is they actually are.

Will likes it less when the poet starts to get more serious and finishes off with a rapid fire verse about being a white gay man in America:

"I'm _supposed_ to have more than you do." He ditches the beret. "Excuse me, ma'am, I'm the one in charge. I was promised the Mountain. An heir disinherited but promised the Mountain since I was small. And now I've got pride, and his hand on my neck and his head on my pillow and my face to the wind but that-- You-- You can't be telling me that's _all._ " He cuts off like he's genuinely upset and walks off the stage.

Nursey makes his noise.

Will holds his arms tighter around himself as the crowd goes crazy. Why the fuck did he ever choose to go to Samwell? He feels like he was just forced to watch someone leave for vacation with their front door open.

There's some final MC banter and the announcements of the Slam winners, (Chandra's friend Walt Ginsberg was disqualified for using his outfit as a prop,) and then the lights come up in the coffee shop, and Will is finally allowed to go back to his dorm room and sleep off this insane experience. Only he doesn't.

He watches as Chandra exchanges numbers with Nursey, a time which she sees as an opportunity to touch his arms a lot, and as she bids them goodbye with a light, "See you guys around, alright?"

"You got it," Nursey assures her, smiling this broad movie star smile.

And then he rams his shoulder into Will's unsubtly until Will ducks into a nod and says, "Yeah, see ya."

So Chandra hurries off to find her friend, laughing as she goes.

Nursey stands to stretch, and Will hastily pulls out his phone to stare at his homescreen.

"So what'd you think?" Nursey asks.

Will makes a face. "What, of Chandra?"

"Uh, _no,_ I meant the slam," Nursey says, laughing, "but sure, let's talk about Chandra."

"Here we go--"

"Cute, right?"

"Nursey--"

"And super smart. I like her."

"You shouldn't lead her on like that," Will says, before he can think of the _myriad_ of reasons to not. "She seems cool and she's obviously into you, so don't, like...you know..."

Nursey's smile quirks evilly. "Wait, you don't think it's a good idea to lead people on, Poindexter? Tell me more about that."

As he realizes where this is going, Will starts to sweat. "You _know_ what I mean," he mutters, heaving himself off the couch and pushing into the throng of people toward the coffee shop's exit.

Nursey stays right behind him though, voice low and amused in his ear. "What makes you think I'm leading her on?"

Without looking back, heart pounding, Will elbows Nursey hard in the chest and says, "Never mind."

"Well, you call me up any time you wanna talk about it, Dex, okay? My phone's always on."

"I'm gonna kick your ass if you don't shut up."

Nursey just laughs.

Eventually, when they spring free of the hoard and onto the dark, chilly sidewalk outside, Nursey thoughtfully says, "I'm starving."

Will realizes he's hungry too and that they probably already missed out on whatever treats Bitty would have made after class, so they walk over to the Perkin's across the street from the science building to grab a bite. Will doesn't bring up politics. Nursey doesn't bring up Chandra.

And so, amazingly, they have a pretty civil meal together, debating the quality of various poems and doing an increasingly ridiculous series of impressions of the performers over eggs benedict and hot chocolate.

 

* * *

 

After that, Will and Nursey start hanging out on the regular.

Or, more accurately, Nursey just does whatever he wants to do and Will feels compulsively obliged to watch while he does it, in case of--anything. So mostly they chill with Chowder, or meet up with Nursey's English major friends at movies and open mic nights, or--most of all-- they study in Nursey's room.

It seems innocuous enough at first.

Nursey's roommate gets a girlfriend a couple weeks into the semester and promptly disappears off the face of the earth, so it's not like there isn't enough room for both of them.

Nursey reads his Intro to Modern Poetry assignments aloud to Will since he's, as he himself would say, "A.D.D. as shit," and occasionally makes half-admiring comments about Will's ability to just buckle down and finish his coding homework in one sitting.

"It's like, almost fucked up," Nursey says, "that you can do that."

"Thanks."

"You're positive it doesn't mess you up when I read, dude?"

Will just waves his hand dismissively. It does sort of mess him up, but not how Nursey's asking. Keeping an ear open for Nursey's low voice intoning poetry uses such a different part of his brain than math and coding that it makes multitasking easy. He can do his political science and freshman writing sem work some other time.

Sometimes when Nursey's reading, he stops halfway through to discuss some point or wording the poet used and _always_ laughs at whatever Will has to say in response, even though Will's not always joking.

The beginning of their first fight, the one about being high at practice, starts to seem very silly. As Will spends more time around Nursey, he realizes that Nursey isn't, in fact, constantly stoned. He's just genuinely checked out. It's why he smiles at nothing. It's why he constantly drops things and trips over thin air. He's thinking about shit while he thinks about other shit. Which is _stupid._ And also which means that Nursey said all that stuff about drugs just to wind Will up. Which means-- Will doesn't know what he wants it to mean.

He's definitely not going to ask Nursey about it.

A lot of things go unspoken between them. It's sort of their whole deal.

Like this:

Despite joking about how many happy tears Chowder would shed over their uneasy alliance, neither of them mentions it to him, or anyone else. Chowder _is_ pleased to see that their arguments have gotten noticably less vicious lately, but it feels like too much of an acknowledgement to let him know they spend time together when he's not there to buffer their clashing personalities. It's like the moment someone asks them a question about it, it'll all fall apart.

There's no conversation that leads to this behavior, no nondisclosure clause. However, Nursey daily passes up opportunities to publicly mock Will with information he's learned during their top secret hang sessions, and he passes them up just because he would have to explain when he'd learned it, so Will knows he's not any readier to come clean than Will.

Instead, they clandestinely do homework.

Nursey reads and reads and reads.

"One," Nursey says, in his muted, forceful voice that could make a grocery list sound like pornography. "His back is full of knives. The notes are brittle around the blade."

Will tries to be engrossed in his Discrete Math homework.

"Two: He sleeps face down every night in a chalk outline of himself." Nursey laughs a little when he reads, "Three: He has difficulties with metal detectors." And he goes on, counting off the numbers of each stanza. Maybe that's why it gets so hard to concentrate on math all of a sudden.

With each word Will gets increasingly overwhelmed and, in the end, stops working altogether.

The fingers of Nursey's right hand spread across the paper of the page he's on, moving down with each line that passes.

As usual, Will set his laptop up at the desk and Nursey sits on his bed, bent over his book, enraptured. Serious Nursey is always a strange thing to behold, and, sure, the poetry thing has been getting worse, but Will usually manages to disparagingly interrupt these readings often enough to temper it.

In this moment, for some reason, he can't speak. He can barely bear to look at Nursey while he reads.

"Sixteen: The knives are what hold him together. It is the notes that are slowly killing him," Nursey recites, frowning at the poem as it winds down to the end. "Sventeen: He is difficult to hold when he cries. Eighteen: He will be very old when he dies and the Doctor will say, _He was obviously stabbed, brutally and repeatedly. I'm sorry,_ the Doctor will say to a person in the room, _but he's not going to make it._ "

He finishes with one finger pointing to the last word, and just thinks for a long moment, gone from the world.

Will realizes abruptly he and Nursey haven't had a real argument for, like, two whole weeks.

"That poem is stupid," he says.

Nursey looks up in surprise and then laughs as Will flees from the room.

That night Will texts Nursey a link to an opinion piece about the effect of 3rd wave feminism on media, the first of many controversial articles to be exchanged between the two of them. They argue about it for three days.

Chowder despairs the resurrection of their bitchiest fights, but the system works.

Will follows Nursey through his routine a few days every week, as seldom as he can stand, looking carefully around corners and down shadowy streets.

Thomas calls but never leaves a message.

And sometimes Will lets himself replay that endless moment: the gold light, the distant laughter, the fear in Nursey's green eyes that squinted up into a smile. Will wonders what Nursey saw on his face. He still thinks about it all the time.

 

* * *

 

When he was young, Will was the sort of kid other kids didn't want to be associated with. He couldn't figure out how to let things go, was always the one to point it out when class activities happened in the wrong order, or to tell substitute teachers when other kids lied to them. His face was pinched and blushing red.

High strung, is what his fifth grade teacher told his mom, and that she hoped this wouldn't develop into a behavorial pattern like it had with Thomas.

However, when Will started playing hockey in middle school, suddenly every weird personality idiosyncrasy on the team was just another weapon to point in the direction of the opposing team. In an instant, Will's uptight tendency to snipe about every little thing was simply something to chirp; his inability to accept losing an argument was an extension of his similar inability to accept losing the puck.

For the first time ever, hockey gave him an identity outside of Thomas Poindexter's prissy little brother, you know, the one with the anger issues.

The boy that made him realize he was gay was someone he knew through hockey as well. Go figure.

Ricky Leibowitz was soft spoken and eager in a way most guys didn't dare to be at their age, especially for someone who had just moved to town as a sophomore. He played right wing, and he turned Will on just by existing.

For a while Will told himself it was a coincidence, but Ricky was tall with big square hands and feet, and had body hair where most of the other guys hadn't gotten any yet, and graceful little creases all around his dark eyes, moreso when he smiled. Will missed two practices in a row faking sick because he didn't dare shower around him. 

Then one day when Ricky came up to talk to Will in just his boxers, Will got so nervous and horny all at once that Ricky earnestly touched his shoulder--which felt like a fork in a electrical socket--and asked him, "Whoa, dude, are you, like, uh, epileptic or something? Can I help? You want me to get Coach?"

Will went home from practice knowing the truth, still shaking like a leaf hours later.

Thereafter, he spent a lot of time either crying silently in his room or reevaluating everything in his previous life as part of his new gay life. He had a gay skincare routine now, and gay math homework, and gay bedsheets. Those were his tragically gay pizza rolls for dinner. He used to have eyebrows, but now he was the reluctant owner of two gay eyebrows, the eyebrows of a boy who got boners because of other dudes, homosexual eyebrows, yes sir, both of them.

Everything he said felt like a lie when the person he was talking to didn't know they were talking to William Poindexter Who Is Gay Now. Will wanted to say to his physics teacher, "I know you know why images are upside down in a concave mirror, but did you know that I watch gay porn? Did you know about _that,_ Miss Kaylor?" He wanted to scream it out of mourning, like a mother at her child's funeral.

For a long while he felt like he couldn’t do anything _but_ come out, and then, after Thomas... the knowledge that he didn’t have to say anything, that he could _hide_ it, was nothing short of a life preserver. It was a rush of endorphins evolutionarily designed to protect him. No one would know if Will never told them, so he would simply never tell.

 

* * *

 

"Feeling alright, Dex?"

Will shakes himself, jerking his head up to see Bitty frowning in concern over a bowl of butter and sugar.

Will isn't really feeling alright. They play Dartmouth again tonight, and he didn't sleep at all. All he can think about is Nursey's shoulder going tense against his when Bierman spat the word 'queer.'

He came to hang out with Bitty at the Haus because it usually calms him down to be around the smell of fresh baked pie and the sweet sound of Bitty's voice rattling off various ridiculous stories about the upperclassmen. Today, though, he keeps nodding off every time Bitty turns his back to check the oven.

"Just stressed about the game," Will answers eventually, scrubbing an exhausted hand down his face. "The last one didn't go so well."

One side of Bitty's mouth grimaces in sympathy. "Shitty hasn't called them anything but Fartmouth in months, if you can believe that. Considering he's a twenty-two year old man."

"You know, I do believe it."

"I know you do," Bitty sighs, shaking his head, but his solemn look breaks into a smile. "Come on. You can help me make the filling, okay?"

"Sure, Bitty," Will says gratefully, feeling some small bit of tension ease.

He's been stressed about the Dartmouth game all week, wound up tight and watching Nursey so closely that Nursey has taken to locking himself in his dorm and refusing to let Will into the building unless Will promises to 'fuck off for a while and find some chill.'

Like today.

When Will checks his phone between chopping apples, there's a text from Nursey that says, _fyi it's not chill if you're just stress-stalking bitty_

But what does Nursey know, anyway?

 

* * *

 

The game isn't so bad for anyone else, but it's a shitshow for Will, who accrues more penalty minutes than he ever has in his life, other than the suspensions after his last encounter with Bierman.

Bierman leaves him alone, but he keeps _smiling_ and making kissy faces at Nursey between plays. Once, Will even sees him talking to Nursey in hushed, smug tones while Will's across the ice.

Will wants to fucking kill him, but unlike last time he manages not to completely lose it, just pulls dirty hits until the coaches stop putting him in.

Samwell manages to eke out a 2-1 win in overtime, and everyone expects Will to be happy about it. 

"What the _fuck_ is that guy's problem?" he hisses as he rips off his sock tape. His whole body feels hot and red and shakey. "Does he _want_ to get the shit beat out of him?"

Beside him, Nursey shrugs. He, unlike Will, didn't get held back for another lecture from the coaches, so he's already showered and dressed. He hasn't made any move to leave, though. He just sits in his stall with his hands hanging between his knees, staring toward the opposite side of the room.

When Will finishes stripping his pads off, when he gets out of the shower, when he's put his clothes from earlier back on, when everyone else has gone out to celebrate the win, Nursey's still there.

"So you're done avoiding me?" Will asks, as Nursey finally stands up to follow him out of Faber.

Nursey makes a mocking face, but his expression looks...bad, still. Like the corners of his mouth are losing a fight with gravity. "Well, if I was really going to wait for you to find your chill," he says, "we'd never speak again, and I think Chowder would murder me. Like, with kindness, somehow."

Not that Chowder knows...anything. But-- "Alright, asshole," Will says, drained, shrugging on his coat and checking for Nursey's automatically before they step out into the November evening chill. "Whatever. I'll walk you back."

For a while they move silently, in darkness only broken up by the white-blue glow of the sidewalk lamps. They stay far enough apart they don't touch but not farther.

As they pass by the River Quad, Nursey says, "We were involved."

"H--What?"

"Me and Bierman? He went to Andover. We used to play together."

"What the _fuck?_ But he--"

Nursey laughs and then slumps heavily down onto one of the benches along the sidewalk. "Uh, yeah, he's a dick. He's...in denial now, or something. I think he thinks I made him do it with my, like, magical gay devil powers."

"Jesus, Nursey," says Will, sitting down next to him. They're far enough away from the streetlamps on either side that it's difficult to parse Nursey's expression, but Will stares at his shadowed face anyway.

"I don't know why I do this shit to myself," Nursey says, voice low, all the way down at the bottom of his chest.

Will tries to gulp down a deep breath but can't. He's imagining Nursey on his knees for that fucker, the two of them in a twin bed together, Nursey's face smiling in a dimly lit room. He wonders if Nursey waited for Will, not only to talk, but because he didn't want to run into Bierman on campus alone. Will is so curious, and he simultaneously wants to beg Nursey not to admit this sort of thing.

In the end, he just says, "Do you want me to kick his ass for real?"

Nursey laughs and reaches over to grasp Will's forearm.

"I would," Will insists, stiff and frozen in the darkness.

"You're such a piece of work." Nursey's hand slides down into Will's and grasps it.

And, somehow, the game left them both so shaken up that Will allows it, holding on to Nursey just as tight, feeling like his stomach has floated up somewhere into the cosmos and left him behind.

For a few tense moments, Nursey simply squeezes Will's hand and looks out at the black water of the river. Then he scoots a closer until their bodies are pressed together and rests their clasped hands in his lap.

Maybe it's only that Will's sleep deprived or coming down off adrenaline from the game, but this feels like a moment out of reality, insulated, like no one could possibly walk by, like nothing less than divine intervention could change it.

The river sparkles where the current moves and the light reaches it, and Nursey breathes softly in and out close to Will's ear. His thigh is warm against the back of Will's hand.

"What was it like?" Will whispers eventually. Like a god damned idiot.

"I don't know. Fucked up, probably. It was what I wanted at the time."

"So he's like...your ex?"

"Ha. We hooked up maybe six times."

"Do you do that a lot?"

"Is that not allowed, Dex?"

Will ducks his head, face screwed up wretchedly. "You shouldn't fuck around with people like _Karl Bierman._ "

"Yeah," says Nursey, and he lets Will's hand go, which is both a huge relief and also makes Will's cold fingers feel like a wound torn open. "Well, don't worry about it, anyway, is my point."

"I'm not worried about it," Will says, wiping his palms on his jeans.

"Uh-huh," Nursey laughs.

"And also this didn't help at all," Will adds. "Terrible plan on your part, Nurse."

Nursey smiles, the scant amount of light illuminating it as he gets to his feet. He says, "Alright, Poindexter. So are you gonna carry my books and escort me to my doorstep or what?"

"Shut up, dude."

"Are we going steady? Be honest."

"We're not going _at all._ What the fuck?"

Grinning, Nursey hip-checks Will off the sidewalk--possibly by accident--before sprinting ahead to escape retribution.

 

* * *

 

The rib that Thomas broke starts acting up as winter settles in.

Around campus, the ground has frozen completely, blanketed in hard-packed snow that won't melt any time before February, and the hockey season has ratcheted up into overdrive as the team begins to realize that Samwell has a very real chance at the Frozen Four this year.

However, Will, who is supposed to have significantly increased his endurance by this point in the season, is suddenly the grouchy subject to shooting pains through his left side whenever he breathes too hard. It's not something he can fix. He already healed wrong years ago.

It also isn't dangerous, and usually only hurts when the seasons are changing, so he decides to just play through it until it goes away, like he did in high school. Maybe he shouldn't be shocked when people notice.

Chowder asks first, pulls him aside after practice one day to make concerned noises about the way Will has been wincing and holding his torso, and Nursey doesn't add anything even though he's well within earshot, so he's probably been wondering, too.

"Just a broken rib that healed weird," Will assures Chowder. "It gets stiff when the weather changes."

"You should get that looked at, young man," Bitty announces imperiously, half out of his sweater across the dressing room, elbows askew. "If it gets infected and falls off, where will our team be _then?"_

"What the hell? Oh man, Bits!" shouts Holster.

Ransom spreads his hands in the air in front of him like he's smoothing a banner. "Area College Student Spontaneously Expells Broken Rib."

"Doctors hate him," Holster adds, and he and Ransom high five.

Bitty titters along but rolls his eyes.

Nursey smiles.

"How'd it happen, Dex?" Chowder asks, eyes big.

Will...Will remembers it happening for an extended moment. He pauses for too long.

"Dex?" goes Bitty.

All at once too big in his itching blushing skin, Will snaps, "You guys know I play _hockey,_ right?" and stalks into the showers.

In his wake he hears Ransom say mournfully, "It's that escaping rib talking. We didn't raise him to act this way."

 

* * *

 

Days with Nursey don't feel so much like fruitless one-sided paranoia anymore, what with Nursey constantly texting Will new reasons to come hang out at his dorm. It's too cold to go all the way to the Haus, there's a cockroach in the drain with Will's name on it, extra readings, phone charging, laundry day, mini-fridge broken again, again, again. Will tries not to jump to conclusions, but Nursey's mini-fridge breaks suspiciously often. Will always fixes it for him, regardless.

And sometimes when Nursey sends one of those texts Will thinks, booty call.

It never is. Nursey doesn't do so much as try to hold his hand again. What it _is,_ though, is maybe worse: Nursey making excuses to see him, not touching, not anything, just alone together in a mostly quiet room. 

Their debates don't get Will's blood going in the same cold, distant way they used to, as if Nursey could be separated in Will's mind from the things he makes Will feel. The constantly rejuvenated anger had once tempered his encroaching appreciation for Nursey's reading voice, for his inherent compassion and his sarcastic jokes and the warmth of his smile. But these days fighting with Nursey only seems to bring everything closer together, drawing every sound and touch exchanged between them into one bright, concentrated conclusion.

It's all too familiar and lived in. Every insult is an inside joke. Every altercation is a set-up for which the punchline is still coming.

 

* * *

 

"Where have you been lately?" Chowder asks, when Will walks into Intro to Computer Programming still yawning, having been up late at Nursey's the night before.

Will collapses into the chair next to him. "I've been busy," he says, shrugging as he logs into the computer. "It's finals. Also I've seen you plenty."

"Yeah, for _hockey._ You know, if you'd maybe... _met someone_ or something," Chowder wheedles, waggling his faint eyebrows, "you could tell me."

Logically Will knows that Chowder probably didn't use gender neutral terminology on purpose, but it still makes him feel a lot of irritating things.

"Uh-huh, and how's Farmer doing?" he asks flatly.

Chowder turns pink but keeps smiling. "Don't change the subject. You have a weird secret. You're acting weird. Secretive."

Will takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Drop it, Chowder," he says.

But still. A faraway feeling of deja vu is curling in his gut even as he gives Chowder the evil eye. Will can trust Chowder. Chowder is sitting there in the same Sharks sweatshirt he wears every other day, still enduring braces at age 18, asking Will to confide in him like it's easy. Chowder is a good person, and he's never once said anything even the slightest hint negative about Bitty or any other gay person on campus. In fact, Will realizes when he thinks back, he hasn't heard anyone make any sort of comment about Bitty except...himself.

Will could--

"Fine, okay," Chowder says, laughing. "Consider it dropped."

The relief is a warm wave crashing over him, spinning him ankles over shoulders. And then what? he wonders. Chowder knows, and feels deeply sorry for him and shoots him concerned looks every time a dude takes his shirt off in the locker room, and Will never tells anyone else? What's the point of that.

 

* * *

 

"And you're sure you know how to do this?"

"Nurse."

"I know, but--"

"I swear to God."

"I'm just saying, it keeps breaking right after you fix it."

Will isn't yet willing to accuse Nursey of sabotaging his own mini-fridge for attention, so he just levels Nursey an incredulous stare and says, "I can't believe you're making me spend my last night on campus fixing your fridge and you can't even be quiet while I do it."

Nursey, who is uselessly reclining on his bed, smooshing up his curly dark hair against the pillow, laughs and says, "You like silence when you do it, huh?"

"Ugh. Dude," Will mutters. He can feel himself smiling, though, as he slides the fridge's back panel back into place and collects the screws from a toolbox compartment.

Nursey lies there watching Will put the screws in for a moment and then says in a slightly weird voice--which isn't saying much considering every Nursey-voice except the calmly mocking one sounds weird to Will-- "You wanna do something tonight?"

Will stands up and shoves the mini-fridge back against the wall with a deafening shriek of plastic on linoleum. "Do what?" he asks suspiciously.

Nursey shrugs and looks away, up at the ceiling. Even under the ugly florescent dorm lights, the angles of his face are appealing. He looks like a careless young aristocrat, or a trickster god, or...a model, but he also just looks like himself, which is somehow a lot more appealing than all those other things.

"I dunno," he says, frowning. "Like. It's winter break. We should celebrate."

"Right. That's why I'm doing my favorite thing in the whole world," Will replies blandly. "Fixing your cursed refrigerator for the tenth time."

Nursey laughs and looks over at him. "Yeah? So what do I have to do to tear you away?"

Will scratches his neck and settles into a crouch over his toolbox to clean up.

It's hard to remember if he's pretending to be Nursey's friend so he can make sure Nursey's safe, or if Will wants him to be safe because they _are_ friends, or if he's just following him around because at this point he's helpless to do otherwise.

"If this thing breaks again, I will _buy_ you a new one," Will says eventually.

But Nursey's still looking at him like he's waiting for an answer to the previous question, eyebrows raised, so Will adds, "Where are we going, Nursey?" and Nursey smiles.

He leads Will out to the trainyard across the street from the west edge of campus. There's 30 sets of winding tracks and varying chains of boxcars everywhere, with random drifts of snow and tall yellow lights between.

"Why are we even _here?"_ Will hisses, as Nursey laughs silently and beckons him around yet another train.

Once they've reached the far edge of the trainyard, in a spot away from the light posts, Nursey murmurs, "Good enough," and starts climbing the iron ladder up the side of one of the cars.

Will watches in disbelief while Nursey shimmies his way over the edge of the roof and then turns to peer back down.

"You coming, Dex?" Nursey asks, grinning. "Don't worry, buddy. I won't let you fall off."

Will is climbing before he has the presence of mind to consider anything other than Nursey _daring_ him. As he climbs, he mutters, "Really? _You're_ going to keep _me_ from falling?"

Nursey grabs Will's arm and shoulder to haul him up the last stretch onto the roof of the traincar and then sits back, beaming smugly. "I guess we'll both have to keep an eye on each other."

The view is, admittedly, pretty incredible. The trainyard is apparently on a highpoint in the surrounding area, because everything else slopes down in shimmering rows of lights from where they're perched, occasionally interspersed with parks and lakes. And Nursey-- He wanted Will to see this with him, for some reason. This is his idea of a celebration.

"I can't believe you brought me here. This is some manic pixie dream girl shit," Will whispers, finding a place to sit next to Nursey without too many bolt heads digging into his ass. The metal roof of the traincar is bitingly cold through his jeans, but at least Will remembered to wear gloves, unlike one Derek Nurse.

"There's nothing wrong with having a whimsical mind," Nursey tells him, pulling a silver flask out of his coat with a ridiculous waggle of his eyebrows. "And anyway, if I'm the manic pixie dream girl, what does that make you?"

Will folds his arms and says, "Christ. Fine. Whatever."

Nursey snorts, takes a swig of whatever's in the flask with a grimace, and then hands it over to Will, who nearly chokes to death at the unexpected burn of tequila.

"Are you serious?" he gasps. "What the fuck?"

Nursey cracks up. "It was all they had left at the Haus, dude."

"Ugh, count me out. I'm not celebrating the end of the semester with straight up nasty tequila. I have standards."

"Suit yourself," Nursey says, taking another difficult swig, trying to act like it's not scorching his throat.

They sit there for a long time, staring out at the twinkling lights and dark outlines of buildings and trees in silence, until Nursey lies back on the roof and asks, "What are you doing over break, Dexy?"

Will looks back at him, the outline of his handsome face pointed up at the sky. Against his better judgement, Will lies down too, gazes up at the expanse of stars. "I think I'm doing Christmas with my Uncle Pat's family," he says, and saying it out loud makes him feel a little less shitty about it than he had been. "Too much drama at my mom's."

Nursey stays silent for a long moment, exhaling a visible white breath, before asking, softly, "You wanna elaborate on that?"

Will considers it. "Nope," he says.

Nursey laughs, and Will turns his head to look.

"What about you? Big plans?"

Nursey hums, wrinkling his nose. "We don't celebrate Christmas, so, I don't know. Sometimes we go on vacation. Like, last year we went to Dubai. Dad hasn't said anything to me yet, though, not that that necessarily means anything."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Nope," Nursey laughs.

"Fair enough," Will says, smiling.

He can feel his smile droop, however, when Nursey turns on his side to face him, and Will's body temperature ratchets up a thousand degrees.

Nursey folds one arm under his head and reaches out with his other hand to touch Will, the frigid tips of his fingers tracing along his hairline. He combs Will's hair back, eyebrows drawn together in concentration, and pulls the edge of Will's beanie down over the place he touched.

"Are you gonna miss me, Poindexter?" Nursey asks, close and warm in the dark and cold.

Will's mouth drops open and then clenches closed when no answer comes out.

As Nursey's thumb trails down to Will's chin, just under his lower lip, Nursey takes a breath like he's going to say something, and Will's heart impossibly seems to pound harder.

A million different useless things flash through his head, not least of all the memory of the last time the two of them were like this, Nursey's wide hands on his waist, the small of Will's back against the bathroom sink.

And maybe Nursey's thinking the same thing, because a moment later he scowls in this strange, complicated way and rolls onto his back with a huff, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Following a few more seconds of shocked staring, Will gathers enough wits to look away, up at the sky, which he observes sightlessly. His mind is whirring so fast, without actually seeming to produce any legitimate thoughts, that he almost doesn't notice when Nursey announces, "I'm fucking freezing," and starts his way down the ladder to the ground.

They walk back to campus together in oppressive silence and when Will drops Nursey off at his dorm, Nursey bops him one in the arm and says, "See you next year, man," before disappearing inside.

 

* * *

 

Will had some vague hopes that maybe winter break would give him enough time away from everything and everyone Samwell-related to sort out the snarls in his chest and return for spring semester refreshed, but it doesn't really work out that way.

Nursey's typical steady barrage of text messages halts after the night in the train yard.

Will checks his phone enough to be sure of it.

He turns it off and back on again. He occasionally texts with his cousin in the next room to make sure things are going through.

The only reason he's even sure Nursey is still alive is that Nursey occasionally weighs in on the hockey group chat, but there's nothing that could be even tangentially construed as directed toward Will.

Thomas doesn't call either, maybe because Mom is making his calls for him now. Usually she starts out just asking how Will's doing, what Uncle Pat's family is up to, and segues into asking Will to come home, if he'll be up from Coastview for Mass, if there's anything Thomas can do to change his mind.

Will starts prefacing their conversations with, "If you ask me about Thomas, I'm hanging up."

Uncle Pat doesn't try to force anything, just does a lot of pursing his lips beneath his ginger mustache and slapping Will companionably on the back. Auntie Karen tells him at least once a day how welcome he is in their home and how happy they all are to have him for Christmas.

Will gets this part of the family; Thomas gets that part. Like he got a divorce from his brother. Jesus.

On Christmas, he misses his mom in a raw, ripped-open way he somehow didn't see coming. He misses Thomas too, which makes him feel ill. He wants to call Nursey.

He arranges a day to see his mom before he heads back to school, when Thomas and his girlfriend are still in the city after New Year's Eve. It goes as well as can be expected, updating her on all the parts of his life he deems palatable. So nothing important.

Before Will gets on the bus to Massachussetts, his mom tells him, "I love you, so much. You get that, right, Will? This Christmas wasn't me choosing Thomas's side. It's just..." She shakes her head and her face pinches like she's fighting tears. Her skin gets all blotchy and red, the same way Will's does when he's upset.

Will grimaces and hugs her. "I know, Ma. I love you too."

"I don't understand what I did wrong," she whispers into his collar, voice cracking.

Will doesn't know what to say to that.

 

* * *

 

So, yeah, when he arrives back at Samwell, he's not exactly in the mood for the Post-NYE Pre-Spring Semester Kegster.

But he goes, because Nursey still hasn't texted him.

 _"TUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUB_ JUUUUUUUUUUUUUICE," says Shitty when Will walks in.

"Jesus Christ," Will replies, and instantly a solo cup overflowing with miscellaneous green fluid is deposited in his hand by a smirking Lardo.

"Happy January Third's Eve, Dex!" Lardo yells, and then follows that up with a belch.

"Uh, you too!" Will says back, raising his voice to be heard over the pounding bass of the music. "Have you seen Chowder or Nursey?"

Lardo points vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. "I think I saw some frogs headed that-a-way."

Shitty, who is stark naked and doing some kind of complicated yoga pose whilst perched on the back of the couch, repeats himself: " _TUB_ JUICCCCCCCCCCCE."

A chorus of bros echoes this salutation back to him, raising up solo cups with varying levels of sobriety and success.

Lardo flashes a peace sign at Will and turns to cut through the crowd toward Shitty, and Will doesn't stick around to see whether she's planning to reign him in or escalate the situation.

Instead, he goes to find Nursey.

Nursey's in the kitchen, as promised.

It's strange how easy it is to convince yourself you don't want to be with someone, but then seeing that person with someone else is just...a completely different animal. Different zoo. Different _planet_.

Nursey is in the kitchen, making out with some girl.

"Jesus fuck," Will blurts.

Nursey flinches away from the girl and into the counter behind him, knocking over the mound of empties stacked on top, and the girl bursts out laughing, with one hand still resting on the inside of Nursey's elbow, as the cans and bottles clatter to the linoleum floor.

Nursey looks good. He's wearing a plain white tee with the sleeves rolled, and he's let his stubble grow in that way that makes him look like the rakish protagonist of a CW show. He's looking at Will like...well. For a moment he looks freaked out, but then he smirks and raises his chin.

The girl, who has pink hair and a bombshell figure, gets her laughter under control and fishes a pair of cat-eye glasses out of Nursey's front pocket. As she puts them on, she says, "Like I said, I gotta go pick up my roommate from the airport."

Nursey smiles at her and adjusts one of the thin straps of her dress, letting his fingertips linger beneath it for a long moment. "Sure you can't convince her to take a taxi?"

"Yeah, right," the girl says with a derisive snort. "It's been real, dude." She pats Nursey on the shoulder and then slips out past Will, with one last surprised laugh at whatever look she sees on his face.

Nursey's gaze also lands on Will as the girl takes off.

"Hey, Dex," he says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter.

Fuck Nursey.

"Uh," Will says. His voice somehow finds a way to crack like seven times in one syllable. "What was-- Hi," he manages tersely. "Who was that?"

Nursey doesn't look pleased with Will's inability to play it cool. "I don't think I caught her name, actually."

"You _didn't_ \--" Will bursts out, and stops himself, red and trembling.

Nursey's expression goes hard.

But before either one of them can say anything more, Bitty pops up out of nowhere and exclaims, "Dex! Hi! I didn't see you come in!" as he sidles in for half a hug.

Will makes his lungs accept a deep breath and squeezes Bitty under his arm with some approximation of a smile. "Hey, Bits," he says.

Bitty blinks at him.

Will forces out, "How was your break?"

"Oh, you know," Bitty replies hesitantly, glancing between Will and Nursey. "Presents, Christmas trees, a thousand pounds of fake snow in every storefront window. I intelligently put off all my packing until the very last minute, so we'll see how many pairs of shorts I packed to wear this January... Did I interrupt something?"

Nursey recovers before Will does, of course. "Not at all," he says, running a hand over his hair. "Dex sure did, though."

Will scowls at him.

Nursey rolls his eyes.

"Okay..." Bitty says. His great big brown eyes are all kinds of concerned, but he smiles through it. "How was your Christmas, Dex?"

Will takes a moment to think of something to say other than 'my dickbag brother used my mom as an emotional hostage so I couldn't go home.'

"Uh, it was fine, I guess," he says. "I fixed my aunt's glasses like fifty times?"

"I'm gonna get more tub juice. Bye," Nursey announces in the middle of Will's sentence, and promptly fucks off out of the kitchen, corners of his mouth turned down.

Will falls silent.

"Okay," Bitty murmurs.

 _Fuck_ Nursey. Seriously.

"Is he alright?" Bitty asks. "He seemed...I've never seen him like that. Dex, are _you_ alright? What just happened?"

Will shouldn't even be here. He should have gone back to his dorm and not tried to touch base with Derek Malik Nurse, kisser of pink-haired girls and deserter of kitchens.

"That's a _great_ fucking question, Bitty," Will grinds out. "But you should ask it to Nursey, because I don't have a single goddamn idea what's going on in his head. Jesus fucking _Christ._ "

Bitty purses his lips and makes a little tsking noise, placing his hand on Will's arm. "How long have you two been back and you're already in a fight..."

Will shakes his head mutely.

Bitty doesn't ask anything else, but he stands there with his hand firmly gripping Will, chattering on about his Christmas and goings-on amongst the upperclassmen.

Will forces himself to breathe and drinks the rest of his tub juice.

After a few minutes Chowder stumbles in, still looking back over his shoulder at the rest of the party. "Hey, Bitty, could you cover Nursey Patrol for me?" he asks. "It's just, I came with Caitlin and he's _really--_ Oh! Dex! _Dude!"_

Will smiles a little, but Chowder takes one look at him, becomes horrified, and says, "Oh, seriously? You guys are already at it? Is _that_ why Nursey's acting all-- Ugh! Never mind! Dex!" He hugs Will very tightly. "Dex, oh my god! I missed you!"

Will snorts. "Dude, I know. You texted me every single day."

Chowder backs off with a huge grin. "Yeah, but I couldn't see your awesome _face_ while I told you! Dex, I have a girlfriend now!"

"Yeah, I _know_."

"When are you going to tell me about _your_ secret girlfriend?"

Bitty perks up at that. "Dex, you have a secret girlfriend?!"

"I do not have a secret girlfriend," Will says, giving Chowder a warning look.

"I'll get it out of you one day, William Poindexter! Mark my words!" Chowder announces. He giggles and takes a long drink out of the solo cup in his hand and then gasps enormously. "Wait! We gotta patrol Nursey! Bitty, you're off the hook. Dex is here now!"

Bitty grimaces. "I'm not sure that's such a good--"

Chowder drags Will out of the kitchen without brooking further argument.

Well. It's not as if Will hasn't been on some form of Nursey Patrol for the better part of three months. How bad could it be?

Chowder insists he left Nursey sitting on the stairs with strict instructions not to move until Chowder returned, but of course he's not there anymore. Will actually gets pretty itchy and worried until Nursey surfaces along with Ransom and Holster, pushing each other down the stairs from the attic and reeking of weed.

"Heeeey, Dex!" Ransom calls. "Look who we found."

"Nursey's just been telling us that he's got something for you," Holster says, waving hello.

Nursey wheezes a laugh as he steps forward, eyes half lidded, twirling a piece of paper in Will's direction, and promptly dropping it, snickering, "Oh, shit--" He's clearly about five times more fucked up than he was the last time Will laid eyes on him, like twenty minutes ago.

Will catches the paper out of the air before it falls.

"Those sweet reflexes, Dex..." Ransom says reverently, raising his cup.

Nursey's mysterious paper has a phone number on it.

"Chandra's number," Nursey tells him, face twisted up in this strange, cold, unfocused way. "You seemed like maybe you were interested, so I just thought, like, why not spread the wealth?"

Will stares down at the numbers scrawled across the scrap of notebook paper. "Chandra?"

"Secret girlfriend!" Chowder shouts.

"You know, Chandra? That girl we met at the poetry slam."

"That was like 3 months ago. And I wasn't even--"

"You've got a secret girlfriend, Dex?" Holster asks.

"You two went to a poetry slam together?!" Chowder yells.

"I don't--" Will stutters. "Nursey--"

" _William_ and I hang out all the time," Nursey announces to Chowder, slinging a heavy arm over his shoulders and swaying precariously. "It's totally chill, bro."

Jesus.

"You-- What!!!" Chowder looks down at his solo cup in betrayal, apparently blaming his confusion on the alcohol coursing through his system.

Meanwhile, Ransom slaps Will on the back. "Poindexter? More like Pornsexter!"

"Porn sext her?" Holster slaps Will on the back twice. "I hardly know her!"

Ransom and Holster erupt into an unholy combination of cheers and belches.

"Dex and I can hang out if we want, dude," Nursey says hazily, leaning heavier on Chowder with each moment that passes. "It's fine. It's, like, _fine._ "

"Nursey, _you_ were Dex's secret girlfriend all along..." Chowder says, shell shocked, just loud enough for Will to hear over the din.

"I DON'T _HAVE_ A SECRET GIRLFRIEND," Will shouts. Shrieks, kind of.

"BLESSED BE THE _JUUUUICE,"_ Lardo declares as she launches herself down the Haus stairs inside one of those Rubbermaid plastic storage tubs. She lands, triumphant, on top of Jack.

Nursey starts laughing.

"Can I talk to you outside?" Will demands, grabbing his arm. To Chowder he says, "I'm on Nursey Patrol for the night, dude. You can go hang out with Farmer."

"Wow," Chowder says, eyes wide. "Okay."

Nursey snorts as Will leads him toward the door. "Uh oh. I'm in trouble now."

"Why are you acting like this?" Will hisses.

Nursey shakes his head, face going serious again. "Hey, you know what? I don't think I want to talk to you, Dex, actually. Where's Bitty at? I love that guy."

Will rolls his eyes. "Everyone loves that guy."

" _You_ would know," Nursey sneers.

After narrowly catching him in time to prevent him braining himself on the doorknob, Will props Nursey up next to the front door while he digs through the pile of winter coats in the entryway.

"You got me my coat," Nursey announces when Will balls it up and throws it at him. "And you saved my life from the...door. This is so fucked up."

"Well, at least we can agree on something," Will says as he excavates his own coat from underneath what seems to be an adult ketchup bottle costume.

Nursey laughs and tries to sit down on the floor. He's only managed to get his coat halfway on, so Will has to haul him up and wrestle the rest of it onto him, which results in a lot of touching, which is just--

Will grimaces, doing up the buttons with his knuckles pressed up against a tense, warm stomach. "How did you even get wasted this fast?"

"Don't worry about it," Nursey mutters, his hands settling on top of Will's.

Will looks down. "I'm not," he says thickly. "Worried."

Nursey takes a prolonged breath and then pushes him away. "I'm going home now. We're not talking," he says.

"Whatever. I'm walking back with you."

"Fuck you," Nursey snaps, yanking the front door open and stumbling out. "You think you can just--" he says, and pauses for a moment. "And I'll just--" He makes a weird noise.

Will zips up his own coat as the January cold instantly permeates the residual party warmth he'd built up inside.

"I did shots," Nursey goes on, squinting at Will following him. "And _marijuana._ "

"You don't even _like_ weed. It makes you paranoid."

"Ugh, Sober Derek probably just said that to impress you," Nursey groans.

After a second or two spent trying to decipher what that could mean, Will asks, "How would that _possibly_ impress me?"

Nursey half laughs and then frowns, his strong eyebrows going comically furrowed. "Don't ask me compliquated questions. I'm trying to walk home alone without telling you shit."

"You're acting like a fucking asshole, you know that?"

"I'm _drunk._ Go away!"

"I'm on Nursey Patrol!"

Nursey scoffs. "Nursey Patrol is so sondekending. Con...descending." He tries to take his phone out of his pocket and immediately drops it in the snowbank. "Fuck," he whispers.

Will muffles his noise of outrage behind closed lips.

"What," Nursey says, more clearly than he's said anything so far.

So Will fishes Nursey's phone out of the hole for him, and apparently that's enough of a peace offering for Nursey to let himself be walked back without further protest.

"Did you know what, Dex, that I'm bisexual?" Nursey mumbles, bowed over and tapping determinedly at his phone.

"How would I have fucking known that?" Will snaps, jerking Nursey away from a collision with a streetlamp.

"Context clues, my...strange, white, Rebu-Reepabli--" Nursey frowns and looks up at Will.

"Republican," Will sighs.

"Republican!" Nursey agrees. "Friend," he adds, looking back at his phone. "What kind of friend are you anyway? You don't even know my sexual idendidy... Ah-ha!" He makes one last phone-tap with a flourish.

And a moment later Will receives his first text from Nursey in weeks. It says, _ur a ducking idiot sex_

"What the fuck, Nursey," Will says.

"You're a fucking idiot, Dex!" Nursey yells.

Will pushes him into the snow. And then he helps him back up, God have mercy on them both.

Nursey leaves one arm around Will, shoulder all hunched up by his ear to manage it, and laughs horribly. "This is so fucked up," he keeps saying. "This is so fucking fucked up."

Will knows what he means and doesn't know what he means, and it--like everything about Nursey--grates on him in the worst way.

" _You're_ fucked up, dude," he says, but it's not like he's all that sober either.

By the time they go walking past a couple of laX bros at the edge of the Quad, Will's already t-minus 10 to detonation, so it shouldn't surprise him how mad he gets when he hears one of them say, "Goddamn hockey bros always hanging all over each other."

Will steps out from under Nursey's arm only so he can get between him and the lacrosse dudes.

"'Maybe more' is fucking right," the other one sniggers.

Will feels like his chest is expanding with hot, glowing rage. There's only the two of them, and they're both smaller than he is, let alone Nursey. "You want to come over here and say that to my face?" he shouts.

The two mouth breathers flip him off but scurry away down the campus sidewalk away from them.

As he watches them disappear from view, waiting to make sure they actually go into a building, Will tries to get his heart to stop pounding adrenaline through his system, not that it's ever done him any good before.

Nursey snorts and pushes past him to continue the walk back to his dorm. "You're insane, you know that, Dex? This is so fucked up."

Will pulls him out of the path of several more collisions, but all in all they back without further incident, except that Nursey gives him an annoyed look when he tries to follow into his room.

"You did your duty, okay?" he says. "Now chill out and go away."

"Uh-uh," Will replies, guiding him inside by the arm. He can still see the outline of the laX bros in the dark. They had dangerous smiles, comedy that meant violence. "Nursey Patrol doesn't end until you're lying down horizontally."

"So you're gonna tuck me in?" Nursey mutters. He elbows Will away and kicks off his sneakers. "Listen to make sure I'm still breathing?"

Will shrugs. "What if I hear tomorrow that you fell down and died of a concussion from your mini fridge? I'll never get dibs, then."

Nursey pulls down his jeans abruptly and then stumbles into bed. "Don't act like that," he says against his pillow.

"Like what?" Will asks, wondering what was in the tub juice. He feels lightheaded.

"Like we're friends."

"Technically we _are_ friends."

Nursey turns his head to observe Will, his chin tucked under the edge of his duvet. "Why won't you leave me alone?" he asks.

"I want you to be safe," Will replies instantly, and then feels crazy for even admitting that much.

Nursey keeps just looking at him for a few moments, before he nods and yawns, rolling over onto his side. "Well, Kyle's not coming back till tomorrow, so I guess you better stay."

Will chokes on his own saliva, and while he's struggling to recover, Nursey continues, "I could get kidnapped in the night, you know, or like... eaten by a werewolf. You can even have the inside of the bed."

And, well.

 

* * *

 

Will wakes up pinned between the cinder block wall and Nursey's back, too hot and too cold simultaneously. When he turns his head the tip of his nose brushes Nursey's hair.

It's so, so quiet. Every slight brush of fabric screams like a summer cicada.

Will...lets himself have it.

He scoots closer, wrapping an arm around Nursey's waist, even as his throat closes up like he's about to weep. His breath against the back of Nursey's neck is labored, hitched, shaking, like he just did 20 suicides at practice instead of lying motionless in someone else's bed, but he lets himself have it. He feels it without convincing himself it's impossible, which is a hell of a lot more than he can say for himself six months ago.

A few minutes later he learns what it feels like to have Nursey wake up in his arms.

Nursey twitches and lifts up to look around before going absolutely still and laying his head back on the pillow, letting out a long, long breath.

Will wonders if Nursey knows he's awake too. He doesn't think he's doing a great job of pretending to be asleep. He's trembling now.

Still, they both lie there for a few minutes, each letting the other pretend whatever he wants.

Then, Nursey sighs and sits up, socked feet brushing the floor.

He looks away, out the window, at the snow-encrusted oak tree growing beside his building, so that Will can only see a small crescent of his face, his lovely cheekbone and unshaven jaw and hair sticking up in a strange shape. "You should probably get out of here, Dex," he croaks. "My roommate'll be back soon."

Will heaves himself up onto his elbow. "Nurse..."

"Look," Nursey says to the window, his voice strange and higher pitched than usual. "Why don't you ever hang out with Bitty anymore?"

This isn't fair.

"You can't--" Will starts, and his voice cracks. So he swallows, throat clicking, sits up, and tries again. "You can't just _convince_ me to be gay."

Nursey laughs, an awful raw thing, and stands up to turn and face him. "And you can't convince _me_ that this fucked up limbo is somehow okay with you, you fucking _asshole._ "

This is the closest they've ever come to talking about it. It's also probably only the second time Will has referred to himself and the word 'gay' in the same sentence. Ever.

"It's not that easy," Will manages, in awe that they're having this conversation at all.

"And I'll tell you what _I_ can't do, Poindexter," Nursey goes on, as if Will hadn't even said anything, pacing agitatedly around his room now in his boxers and t-shirt covered in tub juice stains. "I can't spend my life being afraid just to make you feel better about how scared _you_ are!"

Frowning, Will says, "I don't want you to--"

But Nursey cuts him off, voice _hard_ , eyes red, "Answer my fucking question. Why don't you ever do this hovering shit over Bittle anymore?"

Will tries to wrap his words around the enormous feeling swelling up in his chest, hands flexing in Nursey's duvet cover. "I-- Bitty--" he stutters, "--has Shitty and Jack, and you..."

"And I what?" Nursey demands. "I have _you?"_

Nursey has these big broad shoulders, and he has long legs, and green eyes that seem to glow in certain kinds of light. He has a cynical sense of humor and a huge amount of faith in people simultaneously. He has an incredible slap shot. He has a great smile.

But whether or not he has _Will_ is...barely relevant.

Disoriented and almost dizzy, Will scoots to the edge of the bed, trying to get his bearings, trying to understand what's happening here. His mind feels sluggish, like he still can't wake up completely. "Dude, I'm sorry," he says hoarsely, voice reedy and thin, "if I made you feel, like--embarrassed, or whatever. I know you can take care of yourself, but I just--"

"I'm not _embarrassed,"_ Nursey bursts out, raking his fingers frantically back through his hair. "I feel like you're trying to turn me inside out!"

Will has no idea at all how to respond to that one.

With a rattling sigh, Nursey looks out the window again. "I can't do this anymore." His body is so still, but not in the gentle way it usually is. "I get that I'm not, like, your type."

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?"

"How should I know?" Nursey snaps. "I'm sorry if trying to kiss you _once_ a _year ago_ turned you into a psychopath who makes no fucking sense, but I get the feeling you might have been like this before."

"Oh, _I'm_ the one who makes no sense?"

"You follow me around _everywhere_."

"Yeah, because of _Bierman_."

"My _ex?"_

"He's dangerous!"

" _You're_ dangerous, Poindexter!" Nursey shouts.

His eyes are red rimmed and wet, glistening with winter morning sun. His mouth is tense and warped. He looks so young here, standing in front of Will in his underwear and sleep creased t-shirt. Will remembers that just two years ago Nursey was sixteen and about to get taken advantage of by Karl Bierman, that four years ago he was fourteen and may have still thought he'd get to the big show, that six years ago he was twelve and probably came home from school every day to watch Pokémon. They aren't kids anymore, but the buffer zone isn't very wide yet.

Will gets up too, to say something, or do something, to make Nursey look like himself again.

Nursey kisses him.

Will's brain tunes to static.

While he stands there uselessly, Nursey's hands brush, soft, against his face, pulling him just gently into the kiss. Everything is warm with sleep except the tile floor under their feet.

This is Derek Nurse. Funny, intelligent, out-of-Will's-league, hockey scholarship appreciated but not required Derek Nurse. Will sees him at hockey, on campus and everywhere in between, reading poetry and making passionate arguments and teasing with a sparkle in his eye. It's insane that he ever thought he could hook up with Nursey and go back to life the way it was before, because this experience would have killed him last year.

Nursey slips him a little tongue. A thumb rubs the nape of his neck. A nose touches his cheek.

And Will takes a step back.

This would have obliterated him. There's no way he'd be able to give it up.

Nursey's hands follow him for a moment, like he's going to try to pull him back in, but then drop, limp at his sides.

"I can't," Will says.

His voice trembles like road gravel under a semi-truck.

Nursey stares, bright eyes wide, lips slightly parted, and the stubble on his jaw looks as rough as it felt. At last, he shakes his head, breaking eye contact. "Shit. Sorry," he mumbles.

Will scoots back toward the door, trying to get his shoes on with numb fingers. He grabs his wallet and keys from Nursey's desk and casts a glance around the room for his coat.

The silence is insane, apparent to the point of tinnitus.

With a thud, Nursey takes a seat on his bed. When Will walks past him to get his coat off the other bed, he hunches down, elbows on knees.

It's the worst kind of morning after. Will didn't put anything especially risky on the table but he's about to lose it all anyway.

When he's ready to go, he hesitates.

He can't see Nursey's face, but his back rises with huge, deep breaths.

He reaches out to put his hand on Nursey's shoulder. "Nurse," he says. And when that doesn't get a response, he tries, "Derek?"

"Can you go?" Nursey asks.

Will goes.

 

* * *

 

When he gets back to his own room, Will's roommate, Han, gives him a suspicious look. "You get laid last night, man?"

He and Han don't talk much, largely because Will is rarely in their room when he isn't dead asleep.

"No," Will mutters. "I didn't get laid."

He lays down in his bed and pulls the covers over his head. He skips his first class of the semester, lies there for hours before he finally gets back to sleep. In the darkness beneath the blankets, he watches his phone light turn on and off as Thomas calls him a record number of times for one morning: twelve calls in a row. Something strange comes over him while he lies there, like he's going numb and waking up at the same time.

Something's gotta give, but when something does, it isn't what he expected.

 

* * *

 

At some point in the afternoon his mom calls.

He seriously considers not answering, given the day he's had, but decides she's already found enough reasons to take Thomas's side about everything. Will can't also be the son who doesn't answer the phone.

"Hello? Ma?"

"Oh, thank God you answered," she says. Her voice cracks like she's been crying, like maybe she's still crying.

Will sits up.

"Willy, I need you to go to Boston for me, okay?"

"Ma, what are you talking about? What happened?"

"Thomas is in the hospital there," she forces out, but her mouth sounds full of sobs. The words come out all garbled. "He tried...to kill himself." She starts crying again. "Oh, God..."

"Why did he try to kill himself in Boston?" Will whispers.

His mom gulps a breath. "Please, can you just go stay with him until I can get there? You don't even have to talk to him if you don't want to, but I need you to go to the hospital and make sure he's okay. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Yeah, okay," Will says. "I'll see you there."

 

* * *

 

Bitty agrees to go with him out to Boston. Jack lets them borrow his truck. Shitty administers a long, tight hug, and says, "You stay as long as you need. We'll take care of everything here." There's a lot you can get if you show up somewhere to tell everyone your brother just attempted suicide.

 

* * *

 

It's surreal. The hospital in Boston doesn't have white walls or white floors. It looks more like a hotel. Everything's taupe.

The faculty must see a hundred people like Will every day, people with the foundation of the world shaking under their feet, but they just do their job anyway, whether that's prescribing medications or changing catheters or cleaning floors.

A nurse at a desk near the entrance makes copies of their driver's licenses, asks them a few security questions, and then gives them each a badge to get into the psychiatric ward. She has to give them the complicated directions to Thomas's room three different times before they get it. It's all weirdly businesslike, going to find his brother who tried to die.

Will's insides are trembling, but when he looks at his hands they don't shake at all.

Bitty and Will beep themselves through so many doors and into so many different winding hallways that Will doesn't realize for a moment when the last door he opens is the one into Thomas's actual room.

But Thomas Poindexter is there, lying on the railed bed with his back to the door. His orange hair spills across the pillow, and, above the blanket across his waist, a sliver of black tattoos peeps through the gap in his hospital gown. His shoulders are huge. He's almost as tall as Will and half again as wide.

"I don't want anything," he says when he hears the door. His voice is familiar, raspy and rumbling and harsh.

Will clears his throat a couple times before he manages to say, "Thomas."

Thomas rolls over in an instant, brown eyes enormous. "Will?"

The heater whirs out air from the floor vent.

Will stays on the opposite side of the room and sucks in a breath. "Mom called me. Why are you in Boston?"

Thomas shakes his head and stares at Will's face like he's never seen him before. But then maybe Will looks as different as Thomas does. Thomas is pale, bearded, grimy. He's missing a couple teeth he still had last time Will saw him. He looks like shit, miserable and old, older than 22 for sure.

"Man," Will says, throat tight with fear, "You can't just show up here and overdose to get my attention."

Will can feel Bitty looking up at him in confusion, but he doesn't look back.

He watches Thomas, and watches Thomas's eyes flick down to where Will is clutching at Bitty's hand like a vice grip. An icy bolt of adrenaline hits his system--even though he _knows_ there are nurses and orderlies just outside the door, even though he _knows_ Thomas can't do anything to them here-- before Thomas's face crumples and he sobs, "I'm so sorry..."

Will's grip on Bitty goes slack.

Thomas looks like an enormous infant in his white bed. As he continues to weep, huge sobs that wrack his body into a huddle, he wipes at his face with the backs of his tattooed hands, causing the thin plastic tube attaching him to his IV bag to shift across his bed. His arms pinch inward like he's holding himself, and his knees come up under the blankets. Snot drips into his unruly ginger beard. His mouth contorts into an agonizing downward rectangle.

The same feet that stomped down on Will in combat boots are bare and curled up tight where they peek out from under the bed sheet. The same face that bent over him at the beach is gnarled with terrible grief.

"I fucked it all up, Willy. I fucked it all up," Thomas chants as he rocks back and forth.

At last, Will finds himself making eye contact with Bitty, and Bitty is the screwed up kind of concerned Will hasn't seen since the last time he was in a hospital.

When Will shakes his head at Bitty's worry, the momentum sends a hot tear down his cheek.

Bitty briefly takes Will's other hand before letting go and walking across the room.

The terror strikes again as Bitty approaches Thomas.

But.

Nothing terrible happens.

Bitty picks up the styrofoam cup from the tray beside Thomas's bed and offers it to him.

Thomas looks at the cup, not at Bitty, and takes it, obviously struggling to steady his breathing long enough to get a sip in.

"There you go," Bitty says. Will expects him to be calm for some reason, but he seems just as nervous as Will would be in his place, voice unsteady and quiet, big eyes darting around between the Poindexter brothers. "Are you alright?"

Thomas slurps at the straw, a silly little noise at odds with the solemnity of the atmosphere. Then he takes a few shuddering breaths, and slurps again, and says to Bitty with tears still in his voice, "You better be treating him right."

Bitty freezes. Deer in the headlights. How many times has Will imagined the moment when Thomas and Bitty would finally cross paths? Somehow this is not how he thought it would go.

"Oh, Jesus," Will says, wiping his face. "Sorry, Bitty, can I talk to Thomas alone for one second?"

Bitty nods quickly and takes Thomas's water from him, then seems to reconsider and offers it back. When Thomas looks confused, Bitty nods some more and deposits the cup on the tray. He nods all the way out the door. Will hears him say, "What in the world are you doing, Eric Bittle?" under his breath as he passes by.

Will laughs in spite of himself. "Christ," he says.

Thomas doesn't laugh with him. He grabs for a tissue off his tray, blows his noise and wipes his eyes, all the while asking in his jacked up voice, "Willy, why wouldn't you talk to me? I just wanted to apologize."

It's so, so strange, to have this vast topic Will has been alone in his head with for two years exposed, laid out plainly in a strange, awkward room.

"How was I supposed to know that?" he asks. "How was I supposed to know I wasn't walking into-- into another beating?" His voice breaks and he looks down at the floor.

"I told Ma to tell you."

"I believed that she believed your bullshit, but--"

"I _was_ sorry. I _am_."

"How am I supposed to _believe_ that, though?" Will demands. The tears overflow all at once, down his burning face, dripping from his chin onto his jacket. "You put me in the... in the hospital."

He can hear Thomas breathing hard, like he's crying again, too. "I was scared. I-- I wanted to make you scared, too."

"Well, congratulations," Will snarls. "You ruined my fucking life."

The room goes silent for a long time, except for the sniffing and whimpering and wiping out of both of them.

"I always knew," Thomas says after a while. "Is that fucked up to say?"

"You always knew... _what_ , that I was into dudes?" Will asks incredulously. " _I_ didn't even know."

Thomas shakes his head. "That you were different, somehow. I don't know. I wasn't that surprised, I guess."

"So. Then. Why the _hell_ \--"

"I don't know what to tell you." Thomas holds out his hands, palms up. The same hands that left Will with the crooked nose he avoids seeing in the mirror. "I started thinking about all the guys I knew who wouldn't like it, and I...wanted you to be safe."

Will laughs out loud at that, but it sounds awful.

Thomas sneers at some unseen threat in the middle distance. "The shrink says I lash out when life is overwhelming. I don't know."

"You're seeing a _shrink?_ "

"Part of my parole. It's not worth shit. Obviously."

"Obviously," Will parrots. "Thomas, why are you _here?_ "

Thomas crumples again. He can't hold it together for more than a couple minutes at a time. "I'm sick to death of being in everybody's way," he whimpers. "Janine dumped me. I told her I'd do it if she left, but I came to Boston instead, to talk to you, and you still wouldn't answer my calls, and next thing I knew I was waking up with a doctor in my face. They said I called the ambulance myself."

Jesus Christ.

"You better keep seeing that shrink."

Thomas looks up at him, earnest hope written all over his face. "Listen, you don't have to forgive me, but you're my little brother, Willy."

"Okay..."

"You gotta tell me you don't hate me."

A wave of nausea drags down through Will's stomach. "I don't have to tell you _shit_."

As if he hadn't spoken, Thomas continues, "I want you to know that if Ma ever has, like, a Catholic problem about any of this, I'll be on your side. We're on the same team." He says it all so fast Will knows he must have practiced it.

"You're so fucked up," Will whispers.

Tears keep streaming down Thomas's face as he stares across the room at Will. "I'm sorry," he says, and looks down at his lap, his violent hands laid flat, his hospital blanket. "I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry."

There's a knock on the door and after a moment, Bitty pokes his head through. "Hey, Dex? Your mom is here."

Will nods. His tears have all dried up. He feels like a husk, nose and eyes stinging.

"Ma's here?" Thomas asks, perking up.

In she walks, smelling of bread dough and lavender, wearing a pressed green dress. Just the sight of her calms Will down, and yet he has a dozen memories of her with her lip curled, watching the news, saying things like, 'Sickness comes back around to sinners.'

She gives his arm a brief squeeze but rushes past him to get to Thomas.

After a long moment, wherein every reason in the world to leave crosses Will's mind, Will follows her, and when she sits down on the bed to hug his brother tight, he says, "I don't hate you, Tommy."

Thomas looks up over their mom's soft shoulder and reaches out an open palm.

Will takes it.

Thomas's hand is big and rough and strong, but his grip is gentle, at least for now.

"We'll figure this out, boys," Ma decides aloud. "We're gonna come out on the other side of this one. I'm just so glad you're okay, baby."

"Janine really liked Glee, you know," Thomas says, still weeping.

Ma sits back to look at Will in confusion. "What is he talking about?"

Will chokes out a laugh. "Hell if I know, Ma."

 

* * *

 

Will doesn't stay long after his mom shows up. The situation, such as it is, is too much to deal with for very long at one time. He escapes, leaving only a promise to come home for spring break, at least for a couple days.

Still, by the time he and Bitty get back on the freeway, it's pitch black outside and has started to snow.

It's probably not best to distract Bitty from the road, but Will feels light, nearly empty, like every secret is rattling inside, ready to fly out of him, so he eventually blurts out, "I'm gay."

Bitty gasps, glances away from the road at Will, back at the road. "Oh! I mean, I-- I wondered just now when your brother said-- but I didn't want to just _assume--"_

"You're only the second person I've told that."

" _Oh!"_ Bitty says. "Dex, wow, I'm-- What was it Shitty said? I'm-- honored you trusted me!"

Will laughs, even though he feels like he might cry again, and can't pick just one reason. "No problem, Bitty."

"Sorry, I'm goofing this up, aren't I?" Bitty keeps up his quick little glances, but manages to keep them safely in their lane. "I'm used to being the one on the other side of the conversation. I can't believe I'm the second person you told, after... your brother?"

Will grimaces. "Unfortunately. And. I guess Nursey probably knows, too."

" _Nursey_ does? Like--"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

" _Oh._ " Bitty closes his mouth up tight and stares out into the snowy roadway.

"It's probably not what you're thinking," Will says.

Bitty smiles a tiny smile, glancing. "Well, whatever it is... I know this is an otherwise crappy time, but I'm happy for you, that you told me."

It would be a strange thing to say if Will didn't know that Bitty's felt this feeling, too, of relief and fear, and then how normal it gets, shockingly fast. Bitty sometimes seems like nothing touches him, like a good witch of Oz who turns sadness into pumpkin pie with a wave of his wand, but he's really a guy a lot like Will, who chose Samwell partially to come to terms with being a gay kid in a conservative family. He's been through a lot of the same stuff Will has, and instead of stalking and abandoning people, he's here taking Will home from Boston, driving Jack's truck with habits that weren't intended for winter roads.

"Hey, Bits?"

"Hm?"

Will takes a second to get it out. "Thank you so much for coming here with me."

Bitty glances from the road, eyes all soft and warm, "Oh my word. Of course, Dex. Of _course_."

 

* * *

 

When they get back to the Haus, Chowder and Nursey are waiting for them out on the porch in the cold.

It's snowing hard now, and the sky is glowing orange in that way unique to nighttime snowstorms in January.

At the sight of Jack's truck pulling up front, Chowder launches himself down onto the sidewalk, followed by Nursey, and has Will out of the vehicle and into a hug almost before Bitty's finished parking at the curb.

"DEEEEX!" he wails into Will's ear.

Will laughs a little, patting him. "Hey, man."

Nursey stays a couple steps back with his hands in his pockets, but he says, "We were really worried about you."

"Dex, we heard about your brother! Shitty told us and he told us he asked you if he could tell us and you said he could tell us!" Chowder says, clutching him tighter with each word. "Are you okay?! Is there anything we can do?!"

"I'm okay," Will says, and finds that strangely, it's true. Maybe it's selfish, but he feels better in this moment, standing amongst his solicitous friends, than he's felt in a long while. Or maybe he's just reached his feelings quota for the day.

But, no. That can't be right.

Nursey meets his eyes as Chowder finally releases him, and the same old thing swells in his chest.

Nursey's wearing a motorcycle jacket over a green flannel instead of a real winter coat, probably because he's trying to look good, which is stupid, since he looks good in everything, even when he's not dressed for the snowfall and the tip of his nose is pink with cold.

Will's such an idiot. He's such a fucking idiot.

"Hey, Chowder?" Bitty asks into the sudden silence. "Can you help me with something inside, quick?"

Chowder looks between Will and Nursey, mouth bending into a frown. "But--"

Nursey smiles at him. "You go on ahead, Chow man. I can take care of Dex for a minute."

Bitty hooks his hand in Chowder's elbow and tows him away into the Haus even as Chowder says, "They're not gonna kill each other, right? Are those fight eyes?"

When the front door shuts, Will leans back against the truck and the breath whooshes out of him.

After a second, Nursey comes over to lean on the truck too, and elbows Will a little. "Are you, like, actually okay?"

"I'm better and worse at the same time," Will confesses. "I don't really know."

Nursey nods slowly, like that kind of shit makes sense to him.

Around them, clumps of glittering snow touch down everywhere. Even the shittiest fraternity row in New England looks magical under fresh powder.

"I'm sorry about earlier," Will says.

Nursey winces and smacks Will's arm. "C'mon, don't."

Will shakes his head and pushes off the car to stand up tall, trying to pay forward a little of the apology he got from Thomas. "Actually, I'm sorry about this whole year," he rattles off. "And I'm sorry about Tadpole Tour, too. I'm just. Sorry. In general."

Nursey chuckles nervously, avoiding eye contact. "That's a whole lot of sorry to a guy who kept trying to dare you into doing shit you weren't ready for, so..."

Will shrugs at him.

Nursey shrugs back.

" _I'm_ really sorry about your brother," Nursey says.

"Yeah, Jesus, about him... He'll be okay, but." Will swallows hard. "Look at me for a second."

Nursey looks.

It's like he's glowing. There's something about the orange sky that matches a frequency in his aura. His mouth is twisted down in a frown and his posture is braced for something bad, but he still looks amazing, the best thing Will's ever seen.

"There's a ton of stuff I have to tell you, and a lot of it is shitty. But--" His voices catches. He clenches his fists. This should feel like nothing after an evening at a hospital, but it doesn't. "But the main part," he says, "is that I really, _really_ like you."

Nursey blinks. His mouth twitches, and he looks down at Will's shoes, then all the way back up to his face.

"That's not _that_ shitty," he says.

Will goes limp against the truck in relief.

Nursey cracks a smile. "I mean, I'm sure there are worse things."

"Okay..." Will says. "Okay."

Nursey elbows him again. "All those study dates are paying off, huh?"

"Ugh."

"Are we finally gonna be d partners for real?"

"You're so gross." Will bursts out laughing all of a sudden, embarrassed.

Nursey laughs too, but it falters quickly, and then he pulls Will into a hug, arms tight around his shoulders. He smells _so_ good, even in the cold.

"You might have figured this out already, but I like you back," he says.

Will is fairly sure he'd fall over if Nursey weren't already holding him up, and so he presses closer, whispering, "Good to know."

"We should switch letterman jackets," Nursey suggests, maybe teasing.

But Will just replies, "Whatever you want."

"Oh. You can tell people it's like a joke thing or..."

"Nah, it's fine."

"No?"

Will shakes his head and holds on tight.

He takes a moment, as he has done many times before, to contemplate the moment in the bathroom. He considers that maybe what Nursey saw before he smiled wasn't anything ground-breaking or humiliating or borderline psychic. Nursey may not have seen Will's callused gay heart written across his face after all. Maybe he just saw Will himself--just a boy Nursey wanted to kiss, and he grinned, gums and teeth, because he was about to kiss him.

"You're in trouble now, Poindexter," Nursey says, low, low, low, into Will's ear. "People are finally gonna know you're into English majors."

"Man, shut up," Will grouses, stepping back to get a good look at him.

Nursey's eyes sparkle in the strange golden light suffusing the darkness. "Make me," he says, and there's snow in his hair.

Will smiles.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! literally there is so little info about dex and nursey in general i don't know. the basis is this: under that picture of the frogs with the pie from 200 years ago, the caption was like, "a hockey team that bakes. my brother's never gonna let me live this down." which i assumed must have been dex speaking. and i wrote this whole...thing........ because clearly the only kind of person who would tease his brother for baking is...........a fucking criminal......
> 
> i also would like to note: there’s a lot of shitty opinions in this fic, including many of dex's, that i do not share.
> 
> the poem excerpts nursey reads while they study are from zachary schomburg’s ‘full of knives,’ which i ruthlessly hacked apart and removed all intended meaning from.
> 
> and, finally, the title comes from [‘song for zula’ by phosphorescent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcdOLKx2XG8), which touched my heart while i wrote this.  
>  
> 
> _See, the cage, it called._  
>  _I said, “Come on in.”_  
>  _I will not open myself up this way again,_  
>  _and lay my face to the soil,_  
>  _nor my teeth to the sand._  
>  _I will not lay like this for days, now, upon end._
> 
> _You will not see me fall,_  
>  _nor see me struggle to stand,_  
>  _to acknowledged by some touch from his gnarled hands._  
>  _You see, the cage it called._  
>  _I said, "Come on in."_  
>  _I will not open myself up this way again._
> 
>    
>  
> 
> FULL CONTENT WARNINGS: homophobia, internalized homophobia, depictions of homophobic violence, repressed sexuality, repressed homosexuality, description of injuries, homophobic family members, extremely negative coming out experience, unhealthy coping methods, paranoia, referenced suicide attempt, attempted suicide of a family member, anger issues, mental health issues, mental health hospitalization, Nursey references a past sexual relationship with a homophobic partner, that ex-sexual partner uses queer as a slur toward Nursey, family member who assaulted Dex isn’t redeemed exactly but he is portrayed as morally grey and it's implied they may reconcile in the future


End file.
